Whether it came from the supermarket, a commercial patch, or your backyard, chances are that you spent some time finding the pumpkin that looked the best of the lot for Halloween. So now you have a nice, fat, orange pumpkin–maybe even a number of them to celebrate this spooky holiday. But how much do you really know about your Halloween pumpkin?
Origins
Most credit North America as the origin of pumpkins. Seeds in Mexico have been dated to a period ranging from 7000 to 5500 B.C., according to The Pumpkin Patch. The name pumpkin comes from the Greek pepon, which is large melon. It morphed through the French pompon to the English pumpion to its current moniker.
Pumpkin was definitely a staple in the diet of Native Americans. They also wove dried strips into mats. Once early white settlers arrived on the continent, they learned to use pumpkins in dishes ranging from soups to stews and desserts. Today’s pumpkin pie probably dated to their practice of hollowing out a pumpkin; filling it with milk, honey, and spices; and baking it in the ashes of a waning fire. Native Americans used the seeds for food and for medicinal purposes.
Jack O’Lanterns
Pumpkin Fresh reports that Jack O’Lanterns arrived in America with Irish immigrants. The original Jack O’Lantern was not a pumpkin. In Europe, the Irish hollowed out turnips, gourds, potatoes, and rutabagas and put a light in each one to keep away evil spirits and a figure they called Stingy Jack.
Irish legend says that Jack was an old drunk who was also a trickster. He made a couple of deals with the devil and ended up roaming the earth without any resting place.
What Really is a Pumpkin?
If, like most people, you thought a pumpkin is a vegetable, you’re wrong. While a member of the Cucurbita family and considered a squash, Pumpkin Fresh indicates that it’s actually a fruit.
Pumpkins are a source of potassium and Vitamin A. You can also eat their flowers.
A pumpkin is 90 percent water. Around 80 percent of those supplied in the United States are available in October.
Pumpkin Trivia
Your Halloween pumpkin might be off the vine but is attached to a lot of trivia. Here are some of the most interesting facts:
Pumpkins were once recommended to remove freckles and to cure snake bites. The biggest pumpkin pie tipped the scales at more than 350 pounds and measured more than five feet across. The recipe used 80 pounds of cooked pumpkin, 12 dozen eggs, and 36 pounds of sugar. The pie took six hours to bake.
Today, pumpkins are often considered a feed for animals. The biggest specimens have topped the scales at well beyond 1,000 pounds. The Connecticut field variety is billed as the traditional American pumpkin.
Your pumpkin’s relatives are grown around the world. They grow in every continent except Antarctica. The residents of Morton, Illinois have proclaimed it as the pumpkin capital. Morton is also home to the Libby Corporation.
Irish immigrants found American pumpkins larger and easier to carve than the turnips and gourds they had filled with burning lumps of coal to ward off unwelcome spirits. However, Halloween didn’t really flourish as a holiday in the U.S. until the late 1800s.
Although pumpkins are considered native to the western hemisphere, they were virtually unknown to Europeans prior to the explorations of Christopher Columbus. However, the genealogy of your Halloween pumpkin goes back more than 5,000 years. And its cousins aren’t all orange, according to PumpinNook. They grow in green, yellow, red, white, blue, and tan.
Sources:
http://www.pumpkin-patch.com/about.html
http://www.pumpkinfresh.com/facts.htm
http://www.pumpkinnook.com/facts/colors.htm