Halloween, Pumpkin Carving and Wasting Food

Walking on corn maze, Oregon, 2008 Halloween

October 31 is celebrated as Halloween in most of the western world, mainly in north America. 

According to wikipedia this festival has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holy day of all saints, but is today largely is believed to be a secular celebration. People celebrate this festival with many activities which include trick-or-treat, wearing unique and scary costumes, bonfires, visiting haunted attractions etc. Some people also watch horror movies.

I have participated in some of such celebrations in past. We had visited corn maze field as a part of ghost tour in Halloween celebration. In a big corn maze, we walked through interconnected walkways where one can be lost. We walked in groups so that chance of losing friend was low. It was fun.

Next year local people invited international students for bonfires as a part of halooween celebration. This is not very popular during halloween but people do it in some places. Traditionally a bonfire is a controlled outdoor fire used for informal disposal of burnable waste material or as part of a celebration. We burnt firewood in the dark night on a bank of small river in Oregon. It was also fun. You can see the pictures of that event here.

Gunjan's Ganesh carved in pumpkin, looks nice

Last year I participated in a pumpkin carving ceremony in Portland, OR. Pumpkins are cut out to make holes depicting a face, usually menacing like a demon or devil. Source of light is usually put inside the pumpkin and it glows to give specific shape so that people are scared. Every year millions of pumpkins (~68.5 million this yr) are carved in US. This is just wasting of good source of nutrition (food). I wanted to write about this last year. All parts of pumpkin are edible. In Nepal we it this as vegetable (both green and ripen). It has lots of vitamins and other nutritional ingredients and some chemicals found in this food can be used in the treatment of some disease like diabetics. Other than that it is just a good food. I wonder why people are so stupid that they waste such food during Halloween just for fun. Even after using for Halloween, it could be used as food. Thousands of people are dying day by day because they don't have anything to eat. We should seriously think  about wasting pumpkin.