The Fetishisation of Fall

When 70% of pumpkins go to landfill in a country with 34 million hungry citizens, you know our love of Fall has gone too far

Photo by Andrei Ianovskii on Unsplash

You’ll no doubt be well versed in the Fetishisation of Fall. As soon as September rolls around, the US (and increasingly other parts of the world) go into full Fall mode complete with decorative wreaths, pumpkin spice lattes, and orange-coloured everything.

This fetishisation includes, of course, pumpkins. And not just a single Jack-O-Lantern as it may have been when you were a kid. Nowadays scores of them adorn porches windowsills, and kitchen countertops.

They may look lovely and feel nostalgic but 70% of the 1.9 billion pounds of pumpkins grown in the US will go straight to landfill.

In an age where 34 million Americans go hungry and commercially grown food is ruining the world, we have a problem.

IMO, there is a much better, much more real way to celebrate the change in seasons than crafting a pumpkin display that rivals a Gilmore Girls set.

Forget Jack-O-Lantern, today I feel a bit like Jackie-O-Killjoy, here to ruin all your pumpkin dreams.

But for something better. I promise.

Thousands of pumpkins and not a single one to eat

Fall decoration is nothing new. Plenty of homes fill their spaces with orange-coloured stuff every single year.

But when it comes to using pumpkins and other gourds as decoration, the issue becomes less about what level of personal consumption you’re prepared to take on and more about ethics and principles.

Here’s an obvious example. One of the biggest, most ostentatious pumpkin patches is in Circleville, Ohio. The patch displays over 100,000 pounds of pumpkins every year. Yet Circleville is only a couple of hours from one of the biggest urban food deserts in the US — Cleveland.

Do you not find something icky about that? Because I do.

We’re worried about climate change. We’re worried about the world burning. We’re worried about poverty and hunger. Yet at the same time, we spend our October weekends at pumpkin patches taking selfies next to mutant pumpkins that, if they’re lucky, will make it as far as animal feed.

It’s not just the patches, it’s people’s homes too. Pumpkin porch displays have exploded in recent years, so now it’s almost impossible to visit suburbia without seeing at least a handful. There are even companies that, for astronomical sums of money, will fill your porch with so many pumpkins it’ll quickly become the new hip hangout for local raccoons, mice, and squirrels.

But no one is eating porch pumpkins (unless you count the wildlife). 22% of Americans don’t even like the taste of pumpkin.

This is at least one reason why 1.3 billion pounds of them go straight to landfill every single year whilst people — possibly your own neighbours — can’t afford to eat.

It’s that irony that heralded a new era for Fall some years ago. No longer is it simply a season.

Now, it’s a commodity.

Nostalgia is for sale and that includes our love for Fall

Fall hits all our psychological pleasure points, including nostalgia. Halloween became popular in the US in the 1950s so by the time most of us were kids, it was a fully-fledged thing. And pumpkin pies have been part of Thanksgiving traditions since the mid-19th century which gave them plenty of time to become a fixture of your childhood.

It’s no wonder therefore that many of us love the pumpkin bit of Fall. Hell, Starbucks knew that 20 years ago when they launched the Pumpkin Spice Latte. They knew that drink would light up all the pleasure centers of your brain simply by being associated with pumpkins (PSLs famously contain no pumpkin).

But like many other commodified elements of our world, pumpkins have been exploited for profit and social media kudos.

Fall is incredibly visual which is exactly what social media thrives upon so it’s no wonder Fall decor — including pumpkins — has grown bigger and more ostentatious as social media has become a more important part of our lives.

A single pumpkin pie isn’t going to set social media alight, but 100 gourds on a porch might. A poorly cut Jack-O-Lantern in a small but edible squash isn’t going to garner as many likes as the Sistine Chapel ceiling carved into a giant but inedible specimen.

But none of it is real. No one is snapping a photo of an intricately carved pumpkin then roasting it in the oven for dinner. It’s all so…fake.

There is another, more sustainable, delicious, and satisfying way to celebrate Fall. For that, you’ve got to look way back to what was happening before your own childhood.

That, and what happens in Europe today.

I celebrate Fall like an 18th-century farmer’s wife

During Fall I pickle and preserve fruit and vegetables like a demon.

This isn’t so unusual where I live in mainland Europe. There is a connection to local and seasonal food here more than I ever experienced in the UK and certainly than I see in the US. Preserving food here is a cultural thing.

Europe also understands what food is.

Sustenance. Not decoration.

In my home of Porto, there are no pumpkin displays other than the ones you find at the local grocers. Some of these for sure will become Jack-O-Lanterns but most are there simply because pumpkins are in season during Fall.

Fall was always traditionally a celebration because it signaled a time of excess. The difference between then and now is that the excess was preserved, pickled, or stored, not put out on a porch for the neighbours to gussy up their Insta feed.

For me, watching the changes in local market produce — and eating and preserving accordingly — is an authentic celebration of this bountiful season.

This is easy to forget. We live in a world of individually wrapped bananas and year-round produce. We live in a world where pumpkins are modified and bred into just-for-decoration varieties (see: the cute, popular but inedible baby-boo variety). We’ve become so disconnected from food that the significance of the harvest season can easily pass us by.

Except, it shouldn’t. Because the more disconnected we become from food, the more likely we are to think $700 isn’t much to spend on a pumpkin porch display, right?

Wrong. Especially if you’re not prepared to eat $700 worth of them. That’s a lot of pumpkin soup.

Forget the pumpkins. Forget fetishising Fall. Forget using food for decoration.

Instead, quietly enjoy Fall for what it truly is.

An amazing celebration of life itself.

And perhaps make a pickle or two. Your Winter self will thank you for that far more than rotting porch pumpkins.