Shocking, Spooky, Scary, ...Squash?

I feel like a bad stand-up comedian. 

"Ya know, what's the big deal with pumpkins?" *crickets*

But seriously. What the crap, America. We're carving up perfectly edible food so we can put fire in it for one night before it gets stolen and chucked at our mailbox. Did you know there are starving children in Africa? Eat your goddamn pumpkins. They're even delicious, if the word pie comes after. How did something this stupid even start?

The British, of course. 

Of course the British were even lamer. Instead of our huge, bad-ass pumpkins, they decided it would be fun to carve up turnips, mangelwurzel, or beets. I don't know why vegetables were thought to be the ultimate thing to carve lanterns from, but you can't expect the British to be logical.

When all the cool British people decided to get away and found 'MURICA, they also decided to ditch the lame vegetables. They found these huge orange things and immediately recognized the superiority of America over everywhere else. This inspiration is known by historians to be the sole cause of victory in the Revolutionary war. Not really.  

These big orange things were biggest during the harvest season, so we started carving them up as a celebration of getting enough food during the summer that only most of us would die during the winter.

Eventually, we started linking these pumpkins with folklore, specifically with the will o' the wisp. We also started linking the carving with All Hallow's Eve, the night before All Saint's Day.

That leads us to where we are now. Americans buy vegetables that they won't eat (they probably buy more of these than vegetables they DO eat) and then murder them, scoop our their innards, and then carve them up like a serial killer would their victims. We then put fire in them, because this is 'MURICA and in 'MURICA fire makes everything better (see July 4th).

And after all that, they still aren't scary. They're still just a lame art project like those macaroni sculptures that you made in preschool. Except with more 'MURICAN wastefulness.