What to do:
Prepare a place for your pumpkin carving. Set newspapers on a table and get out the knives, spoons, melon ballers, skewers, carrot peelers, toothpicks, and bowl. Cut an opening in the top of the pumpkin, or the side or bottom, depending on what your design calls for. Help your kids pull out all of the seeds and scrape out the inside of the pumpkin working together. Or better yet, have each member of the family do their own pumpkin if they want to. What are you, cheap?
What to talk about:
How is the stuff we pulled out of the pumpkin like sin in our heart? (It's not, but people who like to make value judgments about natural urges and biological events probably also make value judgments about the attractiveness of the natural anatomy of a pumpkin. Such people like to sentimentalize nature. They will probably see a documentary about penguins and leap to wild conclusions about ancient gods and their opinions on marriage on the strength of it.)
How is the way we cleaned out the pumpkin like the way Jesus cleans us out when we confess our sins? (Believing in Jesus attempts to remove the useful, natural, healthy bits out of you and leave you an empty shell.)
What to do:
Draw a scary, funny, happy, sad, or whatever face on the pumpkin, then use the various implements to carve it out. Be creative. When you are finished, read aloud from any Edgar Allan Poe or HP Lovecraft short story to set the Halloween mood.
What to talk about:
How have we made this pumpkin a “new creation”? (We haven't. We've created art from vegetable matter. Discuss art and how people interpret it differently, even to the extent of not recognizing it as art sometimes. Also discuss the dangers of find symbolism everywhere, even when it's not there.)
How do we become a new creation when Jesus comes into our hearts? (We become boring people who suck the fun right out of carving a damn pumpkin, for one thing.)
