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How did Halloween get to be so popular worldwide?

I started doing these right about the time the first kit/tools came out (2000 or so). I did a few more years then stopped. I had my own methods in order to get the detail shown.
I suppose I could have been one of those guys they have on TV doing this every year now.
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We used to carve lanterns out of turnips (no pumpkins in the shops in Scotland in those days), and duck for apples (a bath gets filled with water and apples are thrown in. A kid holds their hands behind their back and tries to extract an apple with their teeth).
 
arthwollipot said:
Pumpkins are for eating, not for decoration. What a waste of a good pumpkin.
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Not much around here. Last time I carved one in front of the kids, I hacked off a piece that looked good and ate it. The way they looked at me was priceless. I had to say "Yeah! You can eat pumpkin!"

Although I'm more a fan of the roasted seeds and guts.
 
A nice bit of roasted pumpkin is absolutely delicious. Though I'd expect that in America, pumpkins are bred for their carvability rather than for their taste. Come to Australia and we'll roast you up a nice bit of a Queensland Blue with garlic, rosemary, potatoes, sweet potatoes and onions and we'll see how you like it. :D
 
Pumpkins are food. They're delicious. There's no reason we can't play with our food, though. How would we have gotten through Close Encounters of the Third Kind without the mashed-potato-mountain? The great chefs all have someone on staff to carve radishes and tomatoes and watermelons and whatevers.
 
Foolmewunz said:
Pumpkins are food. They're delicious. There's no reason we can't play with our food, though. How would we have gotten through Close Encounters of the Third Kind without the mashed-potato-mountain? The great chefs all have someone on staff to carve radishes and tomatoes and watermelons and whatevers.
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The point of the Close Encounters mashed-potato-mountain was that it was weird and creepy.
 
TX50 said:
We used to carve lanterns out of turnips (no pumpkins in the shops in Scotland in those days), and duck for apples (a bath gets filled with water and apples are thrown in. A kid holds their hands behind their back and tries to extract an apple with their teeth).
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Turnips were far more traditional in Britain, I remember them being used a lot. Love me a pumpkin, though. A bowl of carrot and pumpkin soup with warm crusty bread in the Autumn.
 
Foolmewunz said:
Pumpkins are food. They're delicious. There's no reason we can't play with our food, though. How would we have gotten through Close Encounters of the Third Kind without the mashed-potato-mountain? The great chefs all have someone on staff to carve radishes and tomatoes and watermelons and whatevers.
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I thought that the pumpkins commonly used for carving were different to the ones people use for eating. Don't the ones primarily used for cooking have more flesh or something?
 
Gilbert Syndrome said:
I thought that the pumpkins commonly used for carving were different to the ones people use for eating. Don't the ones primarily used for cooking have more flesh or something?
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Jrrarglblarg said:
Good carving pumpkins are terrible eating pumpkins. Around here they often crossbreed with spaghetti squash which gives them weird texture. And weird flavor.
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Like I said...

arthwollipot said:
...Though I'd expect that in America, pumpkins are bred for their carvability rather than for their taste.
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My mother's theory was that the pumpkin tradition was a ploy by farmers to get rid of all the pumpkins. You think you're planting a row of the things and they take over your whole garden plot. And amateur gardeners are worse. A row? That's like thirty or forty pumpkin vines, producing fifteen to twenty pumpkins each. If you want pumpkins for Halloween, start a few seedlings indoors and when healthy, move ONE outdoors. You'll have enough for half your neighborhood. Give a couple of neighbors the seedlings you don't want to transfer outside, and they can have enough pumpkins for the rest of the neighborhood.
 
Kind of brings up why Cinderellas shoe didn't change back when the pumpkin did.

I'm thinking blatent manipulation and lies by the author.
 
Transvestites. They have an excuse to dress up and go out in public....

I used to have a lot of fun carving pumpkins. I would get the weirdest, most misshapen pumpkins I could find, and carve them into fantastic critter shapes....Dragon heads, tyrannosaur heads, etc.
I'd paint 'em too...
The kids that came to house loved 'em .

But as we've gotten older it's hard to invest the energy and the kids that do come to door half the time don't even bother to do costumes... They just hold out the bag for the goodies...
 
Back when we gardened, we once had a hill of pumpkins next to a hill of zucchini. That produced a punkini. It looked like a zuke but the inside was orange, very firm, and seedless. I think we ate it but I don't remember what it tasted like. Never trust a pumpkin. Hurl them as far as possible.
 
cullennz said:
Lose the carrot and you can adopt me
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lol, it actually goes together pretty well, imo. I actually prefer carrot to pumpkin generally, but when I make this soup I blend it into a thick broth. It's weird, because you can't really single out the taste of either vegetable, they just tend to blend together into a really delicious soup. I love adding a touch of spinach to mine, but I've been told it's not needed.

I first made it because we had a few cooking-pumpkins left over, I'd never eaten much pumpkin before but now I do that soup every year and I love it.
 
Meadmaker said:
For kids, candy. For adults, girls in sexy costumes.

What's not to like?
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Sadly, for at least some, such costumes are considered horribly sexist. Or something. (And don't even ask about cultural appropriation and Halloween costumes!)



arthwollipot said:
And why are they manufactured there?

Because America outsourced them there.
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Economics is a harsh mistress.
 
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