Monthly Musing – October 2025 – In my lifetime

“Did you carve pumpkins when you were a child?”

I went to see my osteopath this week and we got chatting about Hallowe’en.  She asked me about pumpkins, and I explained that when I was little, there weren’t any pumpkins (or certainly not in our small village), so we used to carve a swede – and then I was overcome by the sense of how ridiculous that is.  Whoever thought that a swede, a large solid root vegetable (I think they’re called rutabagas in the US) would make a good Hallowe’en lantern?

I can remember my Dad bringing swedes in from the vegetable garden for my brother and I to start creating our lanterns, and it would be quite the job!  There were no elegant or beautiful carvings that you see on pumpkins these days with a swede, no cats or unicorns, no funny faces.  My Mum used to cut the top off to make the lids and then we would set to work, sitting on the kitchen floor on sheets of newspaper taking it in turns to use the Implements of Swede Excavation, ie a long, thin Lancashire potato peeler* (not the t-bar shape that I used today) which had a rounded point on the end, perfect for skewering holes into the swede so that you could start digging the insides out with a spoon, and a large spoon that was often not as much use as you’d hope because as you’ll know if you’ve ever tried this, the insides of a swede are very hard.  There’s a reason why you cook it!

Maybe others managed something more exotic but for us, the final decoration was as basic and as traditional as you can get – triangles for eyes and nose, more triangles cut close together to make a mouth.  A household candle positioned inside held upright by wax melted from the candle, the lid returned to the swede and voilà! – a smiling (actually, more like grimacing) Hallowe’en lantern.  The smell of singed swede as the candle flame touched the lid is an interesting one that I can still remember to this day – I’m not sure it will ever catch on as a scented candle fragrance …

There was no rescuing any of the swede for later use.  Whatever my brother and I dug out was often mangled into little bits on the kitchen floor, and nobody wants to eat singed swede for Sunday dinner.  A day later, after hours of a candle burning inside, the swede was distinctly unappetising, so it was probably just as well that it was only once a year!

My osteopath isn’t old enough to have been around in the years before pumpkins became more readily available here, so listening to myself talking about the Hallowe’en swede made me sound like I was about 300 years old – oh my goodness, it really made me laugh which is not helpful when someone is trying to check your posture!  Isn’t it funny how some of our traditions, wherever we live, are passed down from generation to generation and others are left behind – some might say, where they belong!

It made think of the phrase, “Not in my lifetime!” and it’s surprising what does change in a lifetime, even a relatively short one as I can think of things that seemed rooted in eternity that have changed even since my girls have been around, never mind since I was a child.

Leaving modern-day Hallowe’en celebrations aside, this is traditionally a time of death and rebirth, of letting go of the light of the summer to welcome the dark and rest of the winter.  As much as we may not like change, it’s something that we live with every day; daytime to nighttime, one day to the next, birth and death in all forms.  Letting go of the tradition of wrestling with a swede on a kitchen floor to make way for much-easier-to-carve pumpkins doesn’t seem like much of a challenge, but it’s still change and it’s still hard sometimes.

I may not be carving out a swede lantern tonight, but I will light a candle to celebrate the turning from light to dark.  Our house just won’t smell of swede in the morning.

* Amazon link so that you can see: Lancashire potato peeler