Tonight before our company holiday party, a colleague and I went to see the Macy’s Christmas window displays. This year’s theme is Peanuts, so each window walked through moments from A Charlie Brown Christmas to acknowledge the fiftieth anniversary of this beloved movie.

When Macy’s has their theme each year, they also have a stuffed animal of said theme that you can buy in store. This year, you can buy a medium sized Snoopy wearing a down zip up vest with a Belle (Snoopy’s sister) backpack attachment. We went inside to hold the Snoopys, and they are noticeably lighter and less sturdy than the Snoopy that Ed got me when Snoopy was the Macy’s theme one year when I was in college and Ed still worked there. I remember when Snoopy was the theme in 2006, I asked Ed to get my friend Rebecca a Snoopy because she told me she tried to buy one but they sold out at her nearest Macy’s, and I knew he’d get better access to them as an employee. Well, Ed did this and also secretly got me one, too, for Christmas that year. “I thought you’d want one, too,” he said when he presented it to me and pulled it out of a big bag. “You never say you want anything. Stop being like that. You know you wanted one, too.” I loved it immediately and brought it back to college with me. Now, he sits on the bean bag in our living room.

Ed got me a lot of Snoopy related things, including that Macy’s Snoopy with an attached Woodstock, a little Snoopy with a graduation cap when I graduated from high school, and Snoopy themed cards. I guess one reason I love Snoopy so much is because he’s a part of my childhood, and he reminds me of Ed. The whole Peanuts series reminds me of my brother because it’s so innocent and distills complex ideas and feelings into very simple, concise thoughts. Isn’t that why Charles Schulz and Peanuts in general became so widely loved and cherished? We all just want to be loved and understood and have that demonstrated to us in simple ways. Sometimes, that’s all we need to be happy — a little humanity.

“Why do you love Snoopy so much?” my colleague asked me as I stared in wonderment at Snoopy ice skating in one of the windows.

I didn’t want to bring up Ed because I could feel myself getting choked up thinking about him, so I responded, “He just makes me really, really happy.”