Painted Pumpkins (10-12-09)

This weekend, I found myself in the Hay’s Walmart staring at something I found disturbing. No, it wasn’t a box of Twinkies, though there was a box in our cart, thank you Walmart! What had caught my attention was a bin full of…painted pumpkins.

I admit, that it wasn’t unusual. Considering all the outlandish Halloween decorations one can buy these days, a few painted pumpkins were hardly noteworthy. In fact, they weren’t even scary, at least not in the traditional sense. The faces were quite happy, like little clown faces done up in bright colors with exaggerated features. A little creepy maybe, the way each face was so happy, so cartoonish. And let’s not forget that these faces were painted on pumpkins…

My first thought was that someone artistic had obviously taken a lot of time to paint these pumpkins. I imagined a huddled figure, dripping paint-brush in hand, painting pumpkin after pumpkin, smiling face after smiling face.

Then I realized that the faces were too much alike, too exact to have been done by hand. And that made these things even more depressing. I imagined some horrible machine impersonally stamping or silk screening hundreds of pumpkins with forced holiday cheer.

To me, what is truly terrifying is that there is enough of a demand for pre-painted pumpkins to justify their production. I can understand plastic pumpkins and other decorations. They can be used year after year. An actual pumpkin, though, will only last the season. I suppose people buy them because they are too busy to decorate their own real pumpkins.

From my perspective as an elementary principal, buying a mass produced painted pumpkin misses a grand opportunity to interact with children. Most kids love pumpkins and will jump at a chance to paint them, carve them, and display them. I was reminded of this while evaluating our first grade student teacher, Vanessa Underhill. She put together a multi-lesson thematic unit on the big orange gourds, and on the day I observed, those kids couldn’t get enough of everything pumpkin.

She led them through the terms: stem, skin, ribs, meat, pulp, seeds. She opened pumpkins and had the kids feel the squishing pulp and scrape the seeds. She had them read poetry about pumpkins and draw pictures of pumpkins.

Every year, elementary kids the country over visit pumpkin patches and come home bearing their own handpicked pumpkin. There is even a Charlie Brown TV special dedicated to the “great pumpkin.”

My point is that there are few things in this world that inspire a sense of wonder in a child like a Halloween pumpkin. To take the child out of the equation by buying mass produced painted pumpkins just seems sad.

Growing up, my family never painted pumpkins, we carved them the night before Halloween. It is a tradition I carry on with my family. None of the pumpkins from my childhood would win any prizes. They were not works of art. In fact, I don’t remember a single design, and could not tell you about what any of them actually looked like.

But I can remember carving them. I can remember opening them up, scraping out the gunk, drawing the design and cutting out the face. Mostly, I remember how my mom would make such a big deal over my work. I remember feeling special and loved.

Now, every Halloween, I try to create the same good feeling with my own children.

So while our pumpkins may not be as perfect, perky, and well painted as those from the store, they come with cherished memories and feelings that no amount of money could buy. If painting pumpkins is your thing, I say give a kid an unpainted pumpkin and let him or her go nuts. What they create may not be Wal-mart worthy, but the joy of that creation will be much more rewarding.