The Horror of Halloween in Australia

From Sept/Oct/Nov

I had been thinking that Australia's greatest crime against Halloween was in creating a bit of apathy on my part for pulling out the decorations and doing the holiday right.  Yep.  Until, yesterday.

On Thursday I took two orange Halloween pumpkins to day care for the kindergarten class to help carve.  Well, they didn't carve them, of course.  I did.  They fished out the ooey-gooey pumpkin guts out of the pumpkins - after I had raked them over well with a spoon.  Then, they sort of lost interest and I turned them upside down over the garbage bowl and started carving.  That brought some of the kids back.  They had taken basic shapes and designed the faces I was to carve.  I edited.  I was not going to carve flower eyes.  Too hard... went for triangle eyes.  I did my best at "love heart" eyes on the second one.  I suggested to their teacher that if she soaked them in a dilute bleach solution for an hour or so they wouldn't rot quite as quickly.  And, then I told our inclusion support aide that she could take home one of the pumpkins on Friday afternoon.  She's great and I want her to stay happy and helpful.

On Friday evening, after work, I stopped in the "kindy" room to pick up lunch box, extra clothes, communication books and our Jack o'Lantern.  One of the kindy boys who is quite chatty with me ("Do you have a pet?  Are you a doctor?  I guess doctors can't have pets.") told me that they had taken the other jack o'lantern and cut it up for pumpkin soup.   OH MY GOD.  What is wrong with these people?  Not only was it cleaned by half-a-dozen unclean hands, left out on the counter overnight and possibly soaked in bleach BUT IT HAD A FACE!!  It was smiling at them!!  Arghhhh.  I don't know that this story is actually true but if I were going to put money on one side or the other, I'd put my money on abomination.

(Then, they ate the soup.)

They also ate the pumpkin seeds that were similarly well handled and some of them purposefully dropped onto the ground by my own son before being put back into the bowl.  I guess a lot of vegetables get picked up off the ground and washed then eaten.

But, I'm still grossed out.