Last night we carved our big pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern, or should I say bat-o-lantern, since the pattern we chose was a bat. This was the first time that we have actually carved a pumpkin in five years. Previously, our kids were too young to appreciate the activity. Well, one is still too young, but he went to sleep early, anyway.
Although we have no problem with Halloween, we do concentrate on the friendly and not scary aspects of the celebration. After all, it does have some Christian influences, believe it or not. The Christians, wanting to convert pagans and bring Christianity to the people took a pagan harvest holiday and converted into All Hallows Eve (Hallo’eve or Halloween), or the night before a church holiday, All Saints Day.
Still, we like to have friendly and not scary activities. We picked up one of those pumpkin carving kits. My eldest son looked through the patterns at at first picked out a pirate ship. My husband vetoed it because of the complicated pattern, while I said no because of the skull and crossbones, although being truthful, we could have leaved that symbol out of the scene. We paged through patterns of ghosts, haunted houses, ghouls, skulls and even a vampire about to attack a victim before we could all agree on a friendly bat. Bats are good. They are God’s creatures and they eat mosquitos (which ironically, are also God’s creatures).
Carving the pumpkin, we covered all sorts of lessons, such as how just planting the seeds from one pumpkin won’t yield any baby pumpkins. (you need both male and female pumpkin seeds. an individual pumpkin only has one type, although try as I might,I can’t tell the difference until the plant actually flowers. Turning the pumpkin upside down doesn’t help.) We also talked about how some people like being scary at Halloween and why, and also how the holiday evolved. We covered safety issues with trick or treating and pumpkin lighting. And we just had some nice family time.
Our friendly bat looks good out on our porch covered with fallen leaves. I hope will tell people that yes, you can trick or treat here, but don’t expect anything scary or gruesome.
Are you carving pumpkins this year?
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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