If you live in America, you surely have had to weave through Halloween décor, costumes and bags of tantalizing candy at any box store-probably since August. The American Retail Federation estimates that over 7.4 billion dollars will be spent on Halloween items this year. That’s a lot of STUFF.
I get it. We’re busy. It’s easier to buy that blow up pumpkin for the front yard and a plastic skeleton to hang on the front door. We may not be as creative as Tim Trudgeon, who creates unique pumpkin faces from his woodworking tools, but what happened to the joy of pumpkin carving? Lining the kitchen table with newspaper, tracing a face with a pencil and carving the kind or scary eyes with a knife? Scooping out the pumpkin seeds, getting your hands all gooey and then roasting the seeds in a warm oven for a snack? When the trick or treaters are bellowing with tummy aches on November 1st from eating too much candy, what will become of the store bought decorations? Will we groan that we need to store the scary spiders and plastic bag ghosts with the other holiday decorations? Or will we toss them in the garbage, adding to our already polluted planet? For those who choose the pumpkin carving route, they can be simply tossed in the yard to compost. Some will get lucky and get a pumpkin surprise next year as leftover seeds germinate.