I Quit Halloween

Thanks to squidoo.com for the capturing my feelings so well!

Last weekend, when the jack-o-latern I had carved at our church's fall festival molded--not like a few little white specs but full on green and white fuzzy mold puffing out its eyes--and then became the hottest new hangout for every snail within a 3 mile radius of our home, and even more so when Mr. L went to throw it away and found it had also become a vacation home for a frog and a lizard, I decided to quit Halloween. Like forever. Which is fine because I actually--if you can't admit it here*, where can you?--kind of hated Halloween already what with all the crappy candy**, the costumes that betray our deepest societal dysfunction and fears around sex and death*** and the kids that ring my doorbell and make my dog go crazy every two seconds for what feels like days.

But you know what is awesome about Halloween? Friggin' pumpkins.**** I love pumpkins. Not the jack-o-lantern variety, but just plain old pumpkins, 10 of which I grew this year, 8 of which I processed last night into pureed pumpkin to be frozen for future baking delicacies and two of which I put on my porch to welcome children to this not very hallo-tastic house of ours.*****

How did pumpkins become associated with Halloween, you ask? Well, let me tell you. (And by that I mean, let me pretend to have known this when actually I just looked it up on Wikipedia.) Pumpkins, it turns out, were easier to carve than the original go-to vegetable for jack-o-lanterns in antiquity: turnips. When immigrants from Ireland brought their Celtic celebration of Samhain to North America and found the turnips here inadequate for anti-demon lantern creation, the carved pumpkin was born.

So happy day-of-the-pumpkin to all you readers out there. Even though I quit Halloween, I hope you lovers of this death-oriented day of diabetic comas are donning right at this moment some killer costumes and headed out for a spooky-good time.




*If I were really terrifying, I could join this facebook group of whack-job evangelicals who think Halloween is all about devil worship.
**I'm kind of a 70% cacao kind of girl.
***In just a quick google search, I was able to find a costume that would allow me to dress as a sexy construction zone flagger. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? See my thoughts here.
****Fat toddlers dressed as pumpkins are also pretty awesome.
*****At least we didn't go this far. But I did laugh aloud when I saw this and considered it for 2 seconds.