In a new report out of Chicago, IL, it has been determined that, despite being fun and festive, it’s still kind of weird that we carve faces into pumpkins.
“It’s just overall a pretty fucked up and strange thing to do,” Head Researcher Charlotte Mayberry told reporters. “I mean, you take a perfectly good gourd, scoop out all its insides, throw them away, then carve a dumb little face into its shell just for it to rot on your doorstep? We simply weren’t able to make any sense of that, even after five years of diligent research.”
A few Chicago residents also spoke about how odd the Halloween tradition feels to them.
“I’ve always liked pumpkin carving, ever since I was a little kid,” one resident, Janine Thompson, told reporters. “But when I was carving one earlier this month, I suddenly stopped in the middle of it and thought, ‘Why the fuck am I spending an hour carving a disgusting, ugly, scary face into a pumpkin I could have used to make a really good bisque or something?’”
“It just kinda gives Wilson from Castaway,” another local, Leonard Hewes, said. “While I was carving my pumpkin, I was like, ‘Damn, am I really that lonely?’”
Despite the overwhelming confusion that researchers and citizens felt about jack-o-lanterns, a simple Google search would reveal that people in 8th century Ireland started carving turnips with frightening faces to keep bad spirits away during Samhain, a time where ghosts travel to the other side and visit their old homes. Then, when Irish immigrants came to the U.S., they started carving these faces into pumpkins instead.
“Okay…” Mayberry said after hearing this explanation from reporters. “But you’ve gotta admit that it’s still pretty weird. Like, why not just draw a scary face on a piece of paper instead? It’s 2023 and we’re still carving pumpkins to look like scary little guys? If you carved a face into a huge fruit and put it outside any other time of year it would really freak people out. Ohhhh – okay, yeah. I guess it kind of makes sense now.”
When asked if Mayberry’s research would someday expand to determine whether or not it’s weird when people dress up in costumes on Halloween, the Head Researcher immediately shut the question down.
“Oh, we don’t need to investigate that because we already know,” she said. “We dress up in costumes because it’s fun, sexy, and cool. Duh.”
