Monday, November 1, 2010

Carving Curcurbita Maximus, among other things...

Traditions are funny things, aren't they?



Why do we hide eggs at easter, put trees in our homes at Christmas or carve pumpkins at Halloween?


These are things we get to talk about at our house with little people AND foreign exchange students.


Something fun about sharing our home and life with someone from Korea is that we get to try and explain why we do the the things we do around here! Ha! 


Sometimes there's no explanation at all for traditions -- like the lady in the story of the baked ham. For years she sliced off the ends of her ham -- when asked why, she replied, "Well, my mother always sliced the ends off of her ham!" When grandma was asked to what purpose she cut her ham at each end she answered, "My pan was too small, so I had to cut the ends off of the ham to make it fit." 


So when our resident Korean was beginning to empty her pumpkin of all the mushy, stringy guts, she asked, "Why do you do this? Is this fun?"


But by the end of it, she announced, "This is fun!" and took photos of her glowing gourd goblin along with the rest on the front porch!




Sometimes we just persevere through traditions because they are simply fun and simply shared, even if they create for us some extra work.


Next, we get to introduce her to the Famous Santos Pumpkin Roll! We live on a hill, maybe you can figure out the rest...



For lots of fun information on pumpkins I loved this blogpost at ladybug letter written a few years ago... ever heard of ponpoms or pepitas? The "Pumpkin Papers"?


Click to read all about it -- interesting and fun! http://www.ladybugletter.com/?p=36