By Ashley Mussbacher (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: November 6, 2013
You can never have too many pumpkins at Halloween, especially if you plan to bake the seeds. There were 90 pumpkins available at Student Life’s pumpkin carving event this week – some large, some small, a few oddly shaped.
According to folklore (and there are many versions), jack-o-lanterns are supposed to protect us from vampires, ghouls, and demons. If that’s the case, I don’t think ours were working properly, because there were many of the undead carving their own.
“It’s all about the planning,” one costumed student says, gingerly tracing the shapes of teeth with a sharpie pen over the waxy surface of his pumpkin.
A little further down the table, Mike Martin carves a handprint with a face in the centre.
“Wilson!” someone shouts.
At the end of the table, Faculty and Staff Association members Vicki Grieve and Lisa Morry work on their pumpkins.
“Mine says ‘FSA,’ because I don’t have much of an imagination,” Morry jokes.
The gourds were transformed from plain old vegetables used in pie and stew into spooky faces, movie references, and logos. Everyone at the table returned to their childhood to enjoy the tradition.
For a bit of incentive to stab the pumpkins carefully, rather than hack-and-slash them, a trophy was offered up by Student Life for the best one. By the end, it looked like a tight competition. One looked like the face of an old man with a real knife sticking out of the side of his head. Another used carrots as a makeshift crown. One tiny pumpkin, so small it could fit in the palm of my hand, had a sharp-toothed grin.
It reminded me of a Goosebumps episode, in which a potato is dug up and has a face with sharp fangs and glowing red eyes. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but I had nightmares for a while after watching that!
Student Life’s Pumpkin Carving event was a perfect way to escape back to childhood, to the tradition of carving jack-o-lanterns, and how it felt to be scared of even the simplest ghost stories.
Perhaps even more rewarding was watching those same pumpkins fly through the air in the annual Student Life Pumpkin Smash on November 1, after all the spooks and sprites of Halloween were safely laid to rest.
