Good gourd, carve your pumpkins!
By Janis McMath, Assistant Editor
This Halloween season, I have noticed how common it is for people to buy pumpkins and simply put the gourd on display as is instead of partaking in the fun carving tradition. This minimalist aesthetic bullshit eats me up inside (looking at you, Starbucks) because it is watering down a Halloween festivity that I love so much.
Halloween is easily my favourite holiday because the day is centered solely around creativity. What other holiday encourages people into so many DIY project? There are other holidays that highlight creativity, but none so much as Halloween. You choose a costume that represents you with totally open parameters, you buy or literally make an outfit, you create a piece of art on a pumpkin, and you get to decorate within the very fun and inspiring theme of “spooky.”
This unique holiday deserves respect for how it encourages everyone in society to create art. In a world where there is noticeable bias in schools (and everywhere) against the arts and an emphasis on sciences, this season is extremely near and dear to my heart. Halloween is for creativity, and anyone who refuses to use their creative muscles during the season disappoints me greatly.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect everyone to be perfect at art. There are many people who don’t practice creativity and I understand that making art can be daunting, but I still think that everyone has something to contribute to the season. You don’t have to be good at art to make good art. Some of the simplest pumpkin carvings are the best. I saw the tiniest and easiest smiley face carved into a pumpkin once—yet I still think about how much I love that pumpkin. I’d take a stupid face drawn on in sharpie instead of a straight up gourd any day. To me, that shows that you tried and that you respect the meaning of the holiday.
Every time I see an uncarved pumpkin on display, I honestly feel anger. I’d rather you didn’t even participate in Halloween instead of just placing an uncarved pumpkin on display. I know my feelings may seem extreme, but the action to me represents disrespect for the moral of the tradition. By not participating, people who don’t want to challenge themselves to create art are given an excuse to not be creative, and the cycle continues. As we all know, in time holidays change based on how people celebrate them. If some people don’t push themselves to make something creative on Halloween, then other people will do it to, and then the holiday changes. Not carving your pumpkin could eventually cause the holiday’s important value of creativity to be lost in translation, and I never want that to happen—so carve your pumpkins, please!
