The Day-After Halloween Pumpkin

Our jack-o-lantern enjoys a warm and dry November 1, after spending Halloween evening lit-up on our front stoop, watching over the bowls of candy (which we leave on the front steps while we're out trick-or-treating). 

For the past several years, my eldest son has requested that we model our jack-o-lantern's face on the title character in Nora S. Unwin's 1953 book Proud Pumpkin, which I highlight in this post. 

Here are some of that book's excellent illustrations, showing the "round and bold and glorious" jack-o-lantern as it appeared on Halloween, but also as it was subsequently abandoned and allowed to decay in the woodshed:

We brought our jack-o-lantern inside before we went to bed last night, sparing it a soaking from the forecasted rain shower. 

Still, it will inevitably suffer a fate similar to Proud Pumpkin's. Soon we'll take the pumpkin out to a mound of dirt and brush in our woods, and there it will sit until the shell gradually rots and composts itself, becoming part of the mound, as our other pumpkins have done since we moved here.

Thankful for the small measure of light this pumpkin provided, and overall for another joyous Halloween to share with loved ones. See you next year!

Halloween Party (1953)

An educational film about Halloween decoration and costume ideas from 1953.

Tricks! Treats! Gangway! (1975)

This year, the world will be celebrating Halloween without the author of Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Halloween Tree, and a host of other October tales as crisp and inviting as a mound of raked leaves.  While staying at a friend's family cabin last fall, I saw a stack of worn Reader's Digest magazines from the '70s on the nightstand.  The October 1975 issue contained a wonderful essay by Ray Bradbury, a memory from his childhood about preparing for his favorite holiday: the excitement of gathering corn-shucks, cutting pumpkins, threading orange and black streamers, putting in vampire fangs and fastening a cape to his shoulders; and the sadness of realizing Halloween had passed away until next year.  May this story kindle similar Halloween memories from your childhood.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)

Originally aired October 27, 1966. The Peanuts gang celebrates by trick-or-treating and attending the big Halloween party, while Linus and Sally spend the evening in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is, without a doubt, the most cherished Halloween special of all time. My family and I now watch this every year on DVD as we carve our jack-o-lantern. But when I was a child, it was a special occasion to catch the annual TV broadcast. While commercials tend to annoy me, I actually looked forward to those that often accompanied this Halloween special. I remember when airings from the mid-80s often included candy ads for Mounds and Almond Joy, Caramello, Peppermint Patties, and others.

Here is a recording from October 24, 1980, shared on YouTube by the Museum of Classic Chicago Television, that includes the spinning "CBS SPECIAL" logo, as well as the opening of the program up to the first station break, and commercials that followed:

And here is the full video of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966):

Betty Boop's Halloween Party (1933)

Max Fleischer cartoons tend to be of good quality. This one from 1933, however, seems like it was produced very quickly. It contains some ridiculous sight gags and cheap-looking animation, but there are some parts that actually made me laugh out loud.

Pumpkin carving (1991)

NBC News report from Halloween 1991 on an improved method of carving pumpkins.