In the Peanuts Halloween special, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Linus Van Pelt comes to the following conclusion: “I’ve learned there are three things never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.”  However, with this being shortly after Halloween and with our current election going on right now, I’m going to completely ignore Linus’s advice and share some of my own thoughts here.

Don’t worry, I’m going to stay away from all the political controversy that gets everyone wound up.  My intent is for this blog to be a drama-free zone, which is part of the reason it’s better than Facebook.  If you need more context as to why this blog is better than Facebook, the full top ten list can be found on a previous blog post here.  Election Day is the perfect time to especially note #4 on the list – no political drama.  With that said, here are some thoughts I’d like to share on our current season, starting with Halloween.

I’ve never celebrated Halloween much as an adult.  Sure, I had fun as a kid going trick or treating, but as an adult, I’ve never really gotten into it (except for dressing up as a three-hole punch version of Jim Halpert at work last year, which only makes sense if you’re a fan of The Office).  One tradition I do have is that every year on or near Halloween, I make sure to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on DVD.

I love the Peanuts holiday specials – Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  The Halloween special features Linus’s belief in the Great Pumpkin, who supposedly rises in the pumpkin patch to give gifts to those who wait for him.  This of course leads to him being ridiculed mercilessly, which leads to his quote I have mentioned above.  I won’t spoil the rest of it for you, but if you haven’t seen it, you should watch it sometime.  Linus’s belief in the Great Pumpkin gets him into trouble in another TV special, You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown.  In this special, Linus runs for class president and has to give a speech before the election.  Although Lucy’s poll suggests he has 99% of the vote, he uses his speech to talk about the Great Pumpkin, gets laughed off the stage, and says to himself, “I’ve blown the election!”  The polls still show a 50-50 split going into the election, leading to an interesting finish, but the moral here is clear.  If you ever have aspirations of running for political office, don’t use your campaign speech to talk about the Great Pumpkin.

This leads us to our election going on right now.  Again, I’m going to stay out of the actual politics here on a public forum, but we are certainly going through an interesting time right now.  One of the big topics of conversation where I live has been the significantly longer-than-normal wait times for voting.  Early voting has been largely available in my area in recent days, which I thought might be an attractive option for me.  However, upon arriving at the nearest polling location on the first day and seeing a full parking lot with a line out the door and wrapped completely out the building, I decided that would not be the day for me to vote.  As I have experienced a bit of anxiety with large public gatherings since coronavirus started, a long wait in line is something I would certainly prefer to avoid.  I would find out later that line was 4-5 hours long, which made me glad I did not stay and stand in line that long.  I would go back later last week on a weekday when I happened to be off work, but the 2-3 hour wait that would have taken place was still not to my liking, and I said to myself, “Nope, forget it, I’m doing this on Tuesday.”  Don’t get me wrong, I’m very glad so many people showed up to vote, but personally, the prospect of standing in line for hours at a time just doesn’t cut it.  For me, the purpose of early voting would have been to save time and hassle on Election Day, and for me, standing in line for 2-5 hours on a different day would have just defeated the purpose.  Hopefully people keep coming out in large numbers to vote in future elections, except with more polling locations open to reduce lines.

This brings us to today.  Hoping to avoid a long line, I decided my best bet was to arrive at my polling location first thing in the morning 6:00 a.m.  I usually vote early in the morning on Election Day, and usually, there’s barely a line at all, maybe 5 minutes.  I showed up at the polling location this morning at 5:57, and there was already a line wrapped halfway around the building.  “Oh boy,” I thought, “this could be interesting.”  Well, large crowd or not, I wasn’t backing out now, so I stood in line and waited.  After about half an hour standing outside in 37-degree weather, I began to wonder why Election Day is held in November and not, say, September when the weather would have been a bit more comfortable.  It’s not that the weather was bad; it wasn’t raining or snowing or 0 degrees, but if the temperature is below 40 and I’ve been outside for half an hour, well, I’d like to be inside.  Eventually, I got to go in, and after several more minutes of winding through a line, I finally got to vote.  I cast my vote and I feel good that I did.  I walked outside at 7:03, the process having taken just a little more than an hour.  I also got my “I Voted” sticker.

Now as I am writing this, the election is over (at least the voting portion of it), and everyone is watching the election results come in.  This year has a different feel to it, as due to mail-in voting, I don’t think we’re really going to know the result for a while, and almost certainly not tonight.  (I could be wrong, but we’ll see.)  But I’m sure we’re all preparing ourselves for when the results come in.  Right now, as of the time of this post, we don’t know for sure which way it’s going to go, and people everywhere are feeling anxious.  But whatever the result is, approximately half the country is going to be very unhappy.

While I don’t want to belabor the political aspect, I would at least like to share what I believe are some words of wisdom before the final results are in.  Because we need for the truth of this to not depend on how we individually voted or on who wins.  First, as a Christian, I’d like to encourage us to pray for our country, no matter the result.  Whether or not we as individuals are satisfied with how the election turns out, our country needs prayer.  Our elected leaders, regardless of who they are, need prayer, not only on a national scale, but also our state and local officials too.  Let’s also pray for our communities, and that election results, however they turn out, won’t spill into chaos or violence or anything like that.  In addition, let’s also pray that even in our own personal circles, that relationships and friendships won’t be affected or strained.  Elections have a tendency to divide people, often quite unnecessarily.  Let’s not let that happen.  I’m not on Facebook, but I have been given to understand from many people that this is especially true on Facebook.  So, as a practical step, if we find ourselves getting angry over someone’s political posts on Facebook, maybe we need to turn it off for a while.  Maybe even days or weeks, or until this election season is over. (Or forever; just delete Facebook.)  I’m not on Facebook, so I can’t say for sure, but it might not be a bad idea.

I wish I had even more words of wisdom or profound thoughts, but it’s late, and as I have been up since 5:30 a.m., this will have to do.  I thought it would be good to at least encourage my millions of readers with that.  Now that I have touched on religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin (in no particular order), I have managed to trample all over Linus’s advice in just one post.  I hope you enjoyed my recap of Halloween and my voting experience this year.  With that, I leave you with the following thoughts that people have shared with me within the past day: