With minimal mess, a jack-o'-lantern can be created that's perfect for someone. But that someone isn't likely to be a 5-year-old.
By KATHERINE SNOW SMITH
Published October 16, 2004
[Times photos: Autumn Cruz]
Can you spot the pretenders? At night, it’s hard to tell. On the left is the real pumpkin. In the center is the Fun-Kins version, next to the Michaels entry. Artificial pumpkins should not be lighted with real candles.
Olivia Smith, 7, grabs a handful of pumpkin entrails while cleaning out a real pumpkin to carve. Both girls said scooping out the pumpkin guts was the best part of making a jack-o’-lantern.
Katherine Snow Smith carves a fake pumpkin while her daughters Charlotte, 5, center, and Olivia, 7, supervise. The children drew designs on the fake pumpkins but the carving was too tough for them.
ST. PETERSBURG - Is a pumpkin still a pumpkin without the goop, guts and seeds? The folks at Michaels arts and craft store and at online sites want us to think so. In fact, they want us to think artificial pumpkins are better than the real thing for Halloween decorating.
My daughters and I carved two of the fake pumpkins and one real one to see which we liked best. The fake ones were a little less messy, but were harder to carve. Of the fake variety, the $39 Fun-Kins pumpkin from PlumParty (www.plumparty.com) looks a tad more realistic, but the $11.99 Michaels version is easier to cut. (We found the same Fun-Kins pumpkin for $29.99 at www.funkins.com.)
The lack of mess may be a selling point for parents and older customers, but this is a negative from a kid's point of view. Even though my girls, ages 5 and 7, moaned and squealed as they dug their hands into the slimy insides of the real pumpkin, they later said that was the best part of the whole process.
From a carving standpoint, fake pumpkins are tougher to cut. Carving the Fun-Kins pumpkin was similar to cutting through thick cardboard boxes. At times the sawing knife sounded close to fingernails on a chalkboard. The pumpkin is made of half-inch-thick polyurethane foam poured into molds made from real pumpkins. The competing foam pumpkin from Michaels is a quarter-inch thick. The real pumpkin was the thickest, but it was softer and easier to navigate with a knife.
I barely trust myself to carve a pumpkin with a sharp knife, so I'm not about to let my youngsters have at it. They each make a token cut here and there with both of us holding the knife handle. And I let them pop the pieces out or push them in once I make the cuts. But, along with scooping out the insides, they have a big part in making jack-o'-lanterns by designing them. Each daughter drew a jack-o'-lantern face on paper, then we all drew the same face onto the pumpkin with a washable marker.
Both of the artificial pumpkins look real. From a distance at night, nobody could tell the difference. By the light of day, the Fun-Kins brand looks a little more natural because of its slightly duller orange color. (The Michaels pumpkin has raised, orange seams down two sides.) And because it's made of thicker material, the Fun-Kins pumpkin also looks more realistic when it's carved, because you can see a little of the lighter orange inside though the holes.
You also cannot put a candle inside fake pumpkins. We used a few lights from a string of low-wattage pumpkin lights to illuminate them. The Fun-Kins pumpkin has a hole cut out of the bottom to insert a light, but we had to cut one into the Michael's pumpkin.
The best selling point for the artificial pumpkins to me is that they won't rot. I grew up in North Carolina, where it was sweat-shirt weather by this time of year. We could carve a pumpkin in early October and it would last until after Halloween. But here in Florida it seems our jack-o'-lanterns have a shorter porch life each year. Within a week or so they rot so much the sides start to collapse.
The day after our carving comparison, the flies had started swarming around the real pumpkin while the fake ones looked fresh and pristine across the porch. If your kids are eager to make a jack-o'-lantern, these fake pumpkins would allow you to carve one in early October, then save the real thing for a few days before Halloween. But with price tags of $39 and $11.99, I don't see myself buying a new fake pumpkin every year. We got a comparably sized real pumpkin at the grocery store for $5.
And with the real thing, you get all those pumpkin seeds to roast, salt and eat.
Of course, we can't be opposed to change, even when it comes to tradition. If our Scottish and Irish ancestors hadn't been willing to try something new, we might still be carving turnips for Halloween.
The tradition of carving jack-o'-lanterns had been associated with All Hallows' Eve as a way to scare off evil spirits. In Ireland they carved goblin faces into large potatoes and rutabagas; in Scotland they used turnips. When settlers from those countries came to America in the 1800s, they opted for pumpkins, which were plentiful in the fall and bigger, thus making for a better jack-o'-lantern.
But with real or fake pumpkins, I think children lose their excitement over carving one before or by their early teens. So in time it probably makes sense to buy an artificial pumpkin that can be used year after year. It will be good to hold on to those two fake pumpkins we carved, based on the designs of a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old, and we can use them when the girls aren't into making jack-o'-lanterns anymore.
But for the short time they do get that thrill from sticking their hands in the pumpkin's innards and seeing a candle flicker inside the face they just created, we're sticking to the real thing.
When I told my daughters we were going to try carving fake pumpkins this year, they were both taken aback.
"But that's against the spirit of Halloween," Olivia, my 7-year-old, declared.
I've decided she's right. And we don't want to go and upset the spirit of Halloween.
- Katherine Snow Smith writes "Rookie Mom," a column in Neighborhood Times, a section of the St. Petersburg Times that appears in southern Pinellas County.
