December 20-25, 1954: Square Balloons and Christmas Day

December 20

Here's another early sequence, in which Linus confounds Charlie Brown by blowing balloons into cubes. I've joked about Linus having uncanny powers, but how else can you explain this?

December 21

At least you can stack them neatly this way.

December 22

Look at Lucy's look of horror in the second panel. This strip makes it a little more clear what Schulz is getting at with this sequence. Although blowing up balloons into squares is a marvelous skill, Charlie Brown seems to think it's something wrong somehow, and Lucy thinks it'll bring dishonor to her house. I guess people put more importance into balloon-inflating style back in 1954.

December 23

Even if he tries to blow it up into a rough sphere, it comes out square. This could be taken as a metaphor for something I suppose. Actually, multiple somethings.

December 24

What would happen if you gave Linus an innertube to blow up?

Christmas Day

"Hey! Come back with my pagan idol of music!" "Take it easy, I'm just replacing it with a good, honest Christian symbol! Er, that used to be an element of nature-worship. Merry Christmas!"

We'll have more of Charlie Brown and Schroeder and Christmas next time....

March 4-6, 1954: Three more glued together

Read these strips at gocomics.com.

Second verse same as the first.

February 4, 1954:
Linus: kid of impossibility!  This is what I was talking about, some time back, about the Van Pelt children being kind of... uncanny.  While Lucy grows into her powers and becomes a supervillainess, Linus, taking Jesus Christ as his model, chooses the role of teacher.  Well, eventually.

February 5, 1954:
Poor ol' Charlie Brown.  Poor ol' frustrated Charlie Brown.

February 6, 1954:
This is a great strip!  I love the third panel especially:

We know these characters so well now that, even without the other three panels, we're pretty sure which of the two kids is saying YES and which was saying NO.  But even by their postures, Violet seems just that much more adamant.

A points of note in the art:
In the zoomed-in panel, notice that the characters don't look as angry in the other panels; their emotion is diluted by the energy they're putting into shouting.

P.S. There is a They Might Be Giants song for every occasion.