Yesterday being a Saturday and not blowing a hooley (northern, Scottish, Irish term for very stormy), not like last weekend where Storm Boelo wrecked havoc to power lines, beach defences, roads, rail, and many of the horrible and hideous Halloween decorations already put up, northern towns were out on the night’s streets. This blog was in Hexham where a funfair was seen, lights and music and rides all safe in the dark, clear, calm and pleasantly cold evening. Little children and big adults were all dressed up as spooky, macabre, walking dead, victim of some kind of apparent sacrifice so bloodied (fake) were the costumes, and presumably fake police tape stretched over doorways to alert to the scene of some horrible crime, the witch, and the spider. Obviously this blog does not partake of such things but is observing Alfablot gathering time with the ancestors over these few days, in the inexplicable equation of the Solar cycle of Earth as it spins in space within its allotted orbit, as life continues its linear trajectory of year on year ageing to passing. n passing the state of affairs these days. It also noticed more than a few costumes of the pumpkin.
In Glasgow fireworks were used as weapons in the febrile relations between now not just the Protestants and Catholics but many other groupings. In Newcastle where there is never the need for a reason to party, the partying was fun and the alcohol flowing. But all over the northern Halloween activity the pumpkin was a feature this year in outfit, not just in the grinning lit face on doorsteps and in windows and shops but as the human pumpkin, walking the streets, drink in adult hand and hand in parent’s if a child pumpkin.
Now, given the pumpkin’s appearance (through clever merchandising) as a costume, and the real object piled high on supermarket shelves for the couple of weeks before the Big Day of October 31st, it could be stated that the pumpkin is the new turkey. With many ‘UK’ households moving away from traditional fayre and opting for the Xmas takeaway pizza instead, the rise of the vegan religion, and just too much digital entertainment to catch up on, the turkey is on the decline. The pumpkin however, has been estimated by the National Farmers Union to be produced as many as 15 million.
Pumpkins do not vote for Halloween. This statement is unequivocaly true. It would not be logical for a member of the Cucurbita family, even a cultivated member, to wish to be born from a seed, grow, be picked, and end up as a spectacle for a few days of human madness, sitting grinning inanely as the humans party, and then be chucked in the bin to rot.
Alone of the Squashes, Pumpkins, Gourds, the wider genetic network of the various shapes and sizes and colours, it is the round orange pumpkin of the ‘UK’ Halloween which has suffered this unfortunate tangle with entertainment. From their origin on the landmass now known as America, north and South, ‘our’ pumpkin is indigenous to Mexico and north America, for many thousands of years cultivated as part of food and society, and within the range of crops and cycles which indigenous peoples know is survival. It was Christopher Columbus in 1492 who collected pumpkin seeds and transplanted indigenous species in Europe. Whether he was Italian (which Italy did not exist as Italy then) or Spanish is not relevant to the pumpkin. The fact was they were transported across the Atlantic to end up as the awful spectacle of Halloween 2026, followed by the discarding after the party is over and the rot in landfill.
In general figures, about 25 million pumpkins are bought in the ‘UK’ for its Halloween horrors. 18,000 tonnes of edible pumpkin (which sustained the indigenous peoples over 7 or 8 or 9 or 10,000 years) are chucked in the ‘UK’ after the horror is over. And if a storm interferes with the harvest of the wretched beings, many farms and intensive cultivators now have a Plan B of Pumpkin Smashing.
Pumpkin Smashing has two meanings. One is the act of smashing pumpkins as an act of aggression to do damage to a farmer or organisation. The other is that by humans, adults and children, who wantonly smash pumpkins as an act of fun, but legitimately at a farm event or collectively smash their own pumpkins. The government comes down very heavily on humans acting from stress and desperation who try and protect their society and ancient ways of surviving on the land of Britain. However children are encouraged to smash the food supply in pumpkins, leaving it then to rot, and the humans to have had even more fun after their horrific Halloween nights. It is a strange incongruity in times of apparent cost of living crisis and possible supply chain failure to see the tragic end to these beautiful creatures, their flesh lasting in soups and casseroles for weeks and weeks for those of us who still cook and eat real food, the colours of orange and russet autumn colours and shapes all making up one wider and once indigenous family. But this is not something the vegetarians and vegans concern themselves with, for the natural world has been subverted into ‘we love Nature’ or the fate of those caught up in Halloween, the pure entertainment and degradation of those 25 million pumpkins.