If you thought it’d be cool to get a big old traditional pumpkin for your kid to carve this Halloween, the AP wants you to think again.
Yesterday, the wire service brought us word that the boring orange gourds proffered by your local pumpkin patch just aren’t going to cut it any more. In a story entitled “White Is the New Orange for Pumpkins,” AP suggested that “Eerie-looking white pumpkins — naturally white, not painted — are finding their way into more and more homes this Halloween season.”
Not one to let our front porch décor fall behind the times, we read on, eager to find out how the AP had put its finger on such a cutting-edge phenomenon. “The albinos are called Ghost pumpkins, Snowballs, Luminas or Caspers — presumably a reference to the friendly ghost. And the ones about the size of a baseball? Baby Boos,” the report told us.
Then came the hedge: “White pumpkins — simply another variety of the autumn favorite — have been around for a while, but what was once a curiosity at farmers markets is now making the scene at larger groceries and pumpkin patches.”
But wait! Gensler Gardens, a family farm near Rockford, Ill., has sold out its 6,000 white pumpkins this fall after its “1,000 last year proved such a hit”! Mommy Land author Victoria Pericon “spotted white pumpkins this year for the first time in New York City and thinks her crayon-wielding 2-year-daughter ‘will be crawling all over this thing'”! Deborah Racicot, an executive pastry chef in New York, says party hosts — “looking for the coolest thing to make their party a little more chic than normal” — often buy them! (Racicot, though, “has been carving white pumpkins up for years to display at her house,” which suggests that said pumpkins have been available “for years.”)
And then there’s Nancy Soriano, editor in chief of Country Living, whose magazine put painted white pumpkins (not real ones) on its cover last October. “White has become a strong decorating element in people’s homes,” Soriano says. “They might have white pottery, sofas, and white pumpkins adds a very iconic look.”
All of which suggests that perhaps this trend isn’t as trendy as it might first appear.
But that didn’t stop CNN from falling for this Halloween trick this morning. On “American Morning,” anchor Carol Costello declared: “[W]hen it comes to pumpkins, white is the new orange. … The ghostly pumpkins are albinos, and you know what that means. They’re naturally white and not painted.” Miles O’Brien wondered if maybe a Martha Stewart Living article “might have started this?” “I think it might have,” Costello replied.
Us? We’re still trying to decide which is more frightening: vampires, ghouls and ghosts, or made-up trend stories.
–Edward B. Colby
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.