Pumpkin

Today I had to throw away last week's pumpkin, so this is in its honour. I'm not a fan of the modern Halloween traditions in general - I've always hated horror films, don't see any pleasure in dressing up as any kind of weird or violent creature, and feel rather threatened by the "trick" part of trick or treating - but I have to admit there's something rather wonderful about the glow of a pumpkin.

As a child I remember one year when my mother either left it too late to buy a decent pumpkin, or was trying to economise, and we ended up trying to carve turnips instead. They were very hard, and smelled terrible when the candle caught the turnip flesh on the inside. Naturally I was anxious to avoid repeating this experience, so when my 5 year-old came home from school full of excitement about the idea of a Halloween pumpkin (she's never expressed an interest before), I bought one several days early in order to make sure we had a lovely plump looking specimen. Poppet drew the face and I carved it.

  

Like many modern celebrations, the "new traditions" have obscured the old. My googling tells me that Halloween probably has its origins in the Celtic festival Samhain. Then during the Roman occupation of Britain they attempted to replace Samhain with two of their own festivals: Pomona, celebrating the harvest (the symbol of the goddess Pomona was an apple, so perhaps this is a tenuous link to the tradition of apple-bobbing?), and Feralia, a celebration of the dead. By the 800s, Christianity had taken hold and 1 November was designated as All Hallows Day, probably in an attempt to create a church-sanctioned way of celebrating the dead. 31 October then began to be referred to as All Hallows Eve, which eventually led to its current name.

There seems little consensus about exactly when or why people began carving pumpkin lanterns; google throws up a number of possible stories, most commonly the Jack o'Lantern v. the devil story, and I was amused to find that the original lanterns probably were in fact made of turnips, until Irish immigrants to America discovered pumpkins, which are much easier to carve. It seems an innocent enough pleasure - it's a chance to light a candle, really, and that's always a hit in our household!

Next year Poppet wants to dress up and go trick or treating; this gives me nearly 12 months to work out what I'm going to do about it, and canvass neighbours with older children. What's your take on it?