Think you carve a pretty pumpkin? You’re probably wrong. Pumpkins carved from a pattern aside, pumpkin carving is like singing: While everyone else is terrible, you think you’re really something. Turns out you probably should save it for the car or the shower. Same goes for pumpkin carving-you’re probably only fooling yourself.
While mistakes can prove costly in fourth of July firecracker mishaps (especially coming from a family known for its genetic pyromania), no holiday throughout the year demands as much raw talent, planning, and luck than Halloween pumpkin carving does. With a kitchen spoon, plastic knife and your own mental picture of a perfectly carved pumpkin, you promise yourself that this will be your year. This year you will harness your inner artist, sculptor, cook and butcher into making the perfect Halloween masterpiece that is not only attractive, but makes a statement about you in the process.
Not surprisingly, most people miss the mark. However, all is not lost in carving. For better or for worse, those butchered pumpkins still say something about their carvers’ personalities, exaggerating the quirks in ways that can only be expressed in pumpkin guts.
Each year, my family photographs our pumpkins after we’re done carving them. Even from several years past, I can easily identify each person’s personal pumpkin style, and this year was no exception. Projecting out from the left side of my older brother’s pumpkin sits a huge kitchen knife, menacingly protruding from the skull of the pumpkin. If pumpkins had blood, this one would be oozing. After quickly carving a free-form face into one side of the pumpkin and completing it with candle-lit eyes, my brother moved on to carving the pumpkin’s back side because he “got bored.” While my uncle pointed out that he was carving the back side of the pumpkin and should design it as such, my brother hastily attempted another face before resorting to just stabbing the pumpkin’s flesh repeatedly with the kitchen knife. If that wasn’t enough, he definitely finished the job off with my uncle’s electric drill. The look in his eye confirmed his declaration that this was the most cathartic thing he’d done all year.
In contrast to the wounded pumpkin next to it, my mom’s pumpkin looks like it just won the lottery. Forever the optimist, my mom does not allow the harsh lines of typical jack-o-lanterns to enter her creations. If not for its pumpkin body, this creation would take off for a less morbid holiday.
Such a rosey description leaves out one critical detail of her pumpkin: the snaggle-tooth. Positioned slightly off-set in the pumpkin’s enormous grin, she always carves out one huge, protruding and heinous tooth. While this might seem innocuous, my mom’s attitude about teeth proves otherwise. Ever since my older brother (the one with the pumpkin-stabbing ritual) ripped out one of his buck teeth on a volleyball net several years ago, she’s been apprehensive about safety in general. No one in my family will let this incident die, despite the fact that his dentistry and orthodontia have been in fine working order for some time. My brothers and I antagonize this weak spot of hers by making tooth jokes, generally disregarding our dental hygiene, and flat out reminding her that the incident that led to the permanent residence of a dead tooth in my brother’s mouth occurred on her watch. Maybe because she’ll never talk about teeth explicitly, this persistent fear creeps out once a year secretly-in the form of her jack-o-lantern.
Last in line sits my pumpkin. While the actual content of the design says little about me (I succumbed to the lures of a cut-out pattern), the process of carving it does. I remember very little of the pumpkin-carving last Sunday afternoon because as soon as I sliced the top off, I entered the “pumpkin zone.” While not entirely devoid of artistry or creativity, pumpkin-carving for me is procedural, focused, and precise. After selecting my planned design, I pinned the pumpkin down so that it couldn’t move, traced my intended design, and made the first cut. Not even noticing that I hadn’t talked in some time, my aunt labeled my method of carving “the brain-surgeon method” and jokingly asked me if I really liked to “carve in silence.” Feeling slightly obsessive, I tried to turn the pumpkin intensity down a notch, but my intent remained the same: Until my pumpkin was carved and the candle inside lit, I meant business.
While pumpkin carving will never achieve the same thrill status for me that the fourth of July owns, I’m not casting this tradition aside just yet. While pumpkin carving may never reveal my family’s best artist, sculptor, or designer, it annually confirms the quirks we all knew about but couldn’t express in non-pumpkin language. If nothing else, I at least know who to fear most with a drill.
Chris Jarosch is a junior in the college and managing editor of The Georgetown Voice. Suck it, Stroup.
