I've Never Carved A Pumpkin

Halloween is quickly becoming more than one day, it’s a season. As soon as the calendar hits the 1st of October Pumpkin spice flows like water and no one loves the season of macabre more than the Gay and Queer community, as noted by Writings Of Darren:

Halloween is the one night a year when anyone not matter of sexual orientation, gender identity or ethnicity can dress up and be camp without shame. Campiness and femininity are such big part of queer culture: think Drag Race, Queer eye, pretty much every gay icon.

Halloween to me is a little distant, other than Halloween films and going out when I was older, I’ve not celebrated or had very much to do with it. When I was a kid there were two years back to back where my sister was young enough and I was old enough too go guising (‘trick or treating’ everywhere else in the world.) and both years I couldn’t.

One year I was dressed up and getting ready to head out with other kids on my street when my vigilante mum noticed my face was an odd shape… my glands were swollen. They were so big I couldn’t touch my chest with my chin and I looked ridiculous. Like something Picasso would sketch before starting on the final painting.

The year after I was exited to go out after the disappointment of the year before and in the days before the 31st I developed Chicken Pox so wasn’t allowed to walk the streets with my pals incase I passed it on to them at the time I didn’t really mind but a year later when we weren’t making the same plan I realized how much I had missed out.

My other great loss at this time of year is that… I’ve never carved a pumpkin. Not deliberately, I don’t have any kind of vendetta against them it’s just something I’ve let pass me by. I have carved a turnip, which is as hard and as smelly as it sounds. My experience with turnips leads me to think I’d be quite good with the traditional orange lantern, as turnips are probably harder to carve and you’ve got less surface area to work with. You’ve think given how grim they look, and taste, turnips not pumpkins would be the vegetable of choice when it came to celebrating death.

I want to connect more with Halloween and actually enjoy the holiday, particularly as Scotland has its own unique connections and traditions when it comes to All Hallows’ Eve.