Charlie Brown, Snoopy & Co wish Charles Schulz on his 100th birthday

Charles Schulz in 1956. (Photo: Roger Higgins World Telegram staff photographer via Wikimedia-Commons)

Today, on Charles Schulz’s 100th birthday, all his famous characters have decided to wish him a happy birthday.

Charlie Brown plans to draw a card and ends up drawing many, one after another after another, as not a single one looks good enough to be sent to Schulz. His friend Lucy sits with him, tearing up the ones he discards, helpful in her unhelpful way. The one he is finally satisfied with is torn up by her before he can even tell her that is the one. But then he shrugs; her expression makes it clear that wasn’t great either. He sets out for the store to buy one, very sure the store has run out of birthday cards. He shrugs and decides to go with the flow. ‘Be yourself. No one can say you’re doing it wrong,’ as he himself once said in a comic strip.

Snoopy decides to type out a little something as a present. There he is on the roof of his kennel, his fingers flying across the typewriter. ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’ He is very sure a novel is the ideal gift to a writer. Being a beagle, he also plans four short barks that will translate into ‘happy birthday to you’. He barks only when he has something to say. As he had once sagely concluded, ‘There’s no sense in doing a lot of barking if you don’t really have anything to say.’

Lounge at the Charles Schulz Museum. (Photo: Myotus Wikimedia Commons 4.0)

Linus refuses Lucy’s suggestion that his security blanket would make the ideal birthday gift to Charles. ‘All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt,’ Lucy had once said in a comic strip – and is now happy to replace chocolate with a blanket, as long as it's not hers. Linus, however, is iffy about birthdays altogether. ‘Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace,’ as he once said.

Schroeder plays the piano as a birthday treat. Since it is a toy piano and since he worships Beethoven, the tune is a classical version of the happy birthday song in a series of squeaks. Pig-Pen takes a bath in his creator’s honour, taking the risk of not being recognisable without the cloud of dust around him. Snoopy’s brother Spike makes an STD call to Schulz from the California desert. Since it is a collect call, one is not sure if Schulz took it.

Woodstock emits a series of peeps, which is alright as he is a bird, and him saying ‘happy birthday’ in so many words would shock even Schulz.