“O Holy Night” is now “I Got a Rock.” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is now “Linus the True Believer.” Publisher Chronicle Books is releasing a hardcover collection of 30 reworked Christmas-carol melodies turned into original Halloween songs, timed to the 60th anniversary of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

• “Peanuts Great Pumpkin Carols: Sing-Along Songs to Spark the Halloween Spirit” is written by Daniel Kibblesmith, illustrated with Charles M. Schulz’s classic Peanuts artwork, and arrives September 29, according to Chronicle Books’ own product listing.
• “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” first aired in 1966, making this year its 60th anniversary, per Parade’s coverage of the book.
• Familiar melodies get full Halloween rewrites, including “Christmastime Is Here” becoming “Halloween Is Here” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” becoming “We Wish You a Scary Season.”
• The 76-page hardcover runs 6 by 8 inches and includes both anniversary-specific carols and additional year-round sing-alongs pulled from classic Peanuts moments, per the publisher.

The song-by-song swaps lean hard into the specificity of the special rather than generic spooky-season filler. “Little Drummer Boy” turns into “Little Blanket Boy,” a direct nod to Linus’s security blanket. “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” becomes “I Saw Snoopy Kissing Lucy’s Cheek,” referencing one of the show’s more chaotic recurring bits. Even “O Little Town of Bethlehem” gets pulled into pumpkin-patch territory as “O Perfect Little Pumpkin Patch,” a clear callback to Linus’s yearly, futile vigil waiting for the Great Pumpkin to rise.

That vigil is the emotional core the whole special has run on for six decades: Linus sits in the pumpkin patch every October 31st, convinced with total sincerity that the Great Pumpkin will appear, while everyone around him goes trick-or-treating without him. It’s a strange, melancholy joke for a kids’ special to build an entire episode around, and it’s part of why “Great Pumpkin” has stuck around longer than most of its Halloween-special peers — it takes a kid’s misplaced faith seriously instead of just mining it for laughs.

A carol book built around that premise is an unusually literary way to mark a TV anniversary. Most 60th-anniversary merchandise leans on costumes or reissued DVDs; this one asks fans to actually sing along, which means the songs have to hold up as songs, not just as jokes referencing the special. Whether “Spooky Beagle” replaces “Santa Baby” in anyone’s actual seasonal rotation remains to be seen, but the format guarantees the Great Pumpkin gets a longer shelf life than one October broadcast.