I have a special relationship with the pumpkin — even the word. Say it out loud: pumpkin. There’s something special about it. Pumpkins signify the fall harvest, the harbinger of autumn and the coming winter, the ambassador of Halloween.
As a child, my family would go to the pumpkin patch to pick them. We would ride on a hay wagon out into the fields, the scarecrows twisting in the breeze, the trees orange and brown and red, the leaves fire against the sky. We would be surrounded in pumpkins, their orange bodies bright against the muted earth. We got to pick one to take home with us, one to make a jack-o’-lantern, to turn into roasted seeds, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread and spiced pumpkin cookies. We had to choose carefully.
Afterward, we would roast hotdogs huddled around an open fire, our faces half masked in shadow, the heat of the fire making our skin glow, the cold night air pressed against our backs. I would imagine we were pioneers in the dark, the spirits of the dead floating just beyond the circle of light, watching us.
I would spend hours looking at the face of my pumpkin before making the first cut. I wanted to see the face emerge. I wasn’t interested in stencils or special appliques, or non-facial designs like a black cat, or a tree and moon, or a witch on a broomstick. No, my jack-o’-lantern had to have a face, one that might eat your foot if you got too close or bit off a finger if you tried to touch it, like the face of the Headless Horseman’s jack-o’-lantern.
The orange flicker of a jack-o’-lantern, its sinister eyes casting dispersions in the darkness; the thought of something lurking behind those eyes, something knowing, watching, peering into the darkness is what has always fascinated me about Halloween — the ritual, the idea of it: the celebration of the death of summer, the coming darkness of winter, the spirits of the dead walking the earth. And for that, we laugh at our mortality, don costumes of ghosts, or zombies, or vampires and walk amongst the dead, DayGlo green sticks of light around our necks.
And we watch horror movies, in the dark, of monsters devouring cities or aliens taking over the planet or vampires draining their victims — mirrors for our own fears reflected back at us — with blankets wrapped around our shoulders, hunched on the couch, a bowl of warm popcorn resting on our laps, the glow of the television protecting us from the darkness behind us.
You are never too old for Halloween, never too old to celebrate your dark side, your connection to your mortality, your connection to superstition, never too old to avoid crossing paths with a black cat, to feel the chill in your spine when you peer into a dark forest, the rustle of the wind blowing through the trees. You are never too old to embrace your imagination, your childhood, to wear costumes and eat too much candy and watch too many scary movies and stay up too late.
You are never too old to ride on a hay wagon out into a field of pumpkins and dream of seeing the intelligence that exists behind the eyes of a jack-o’-lantern.
