Fall, autumn, sweater weather — whatever you want to call the cold, gray season leading up to Christmas, there's one thing we can all agree on: It's pumpkin time, and never more so than on today's Pumpkin Day!
Image: Imago/Chromorange
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Ah, fall. The leaves change color, the first chill is in the air and your favorite coffee shop offers up pumpkin spice lattes. In North America, it's hard to imagine this season without pumpkin flavors and decorations, which is why the squash even has its own holiday in the US: October 26 is Pumpkin Day. And if you need some pumpkin-pertinent knowledge to show off, we've got you covered!
1. Pumpkin: What's in a name?
The term derives from the Greek word pepon, which means "large melon" — makes sense when you think of the shape. The French turned this name into pompon, the British used pumpion. The first settlers in the American colonies called the squash pumpkin and thus coined the name that we still use today! The German term kürbis, on the other hand, is more reminiscent of the Latin cucurbita.
2. Record breakers
The heaviest pumpkin ever recorded tipped the scales in 2016 at a whopping 1,190 kilograms, or 2,625 pounds. Although pumpkins are native to North America, a Belgian horticulturist raised the pumpkin in Germany, squashing the world record for the heaviest fruit. The record-setting pumpkins are a variety of Curcurbita maxima bred in Nova Scotia and they tend to prefer cooler weather — which could explain why the world's last three heaviest pumpkins have all hailed from Europe.
And lots of pumpkin means, of course, the possibility for lots of dessert: the largest pumpkin pie ever made was more than 1.5 meters (5 feet) in diameter, weighed over 180 kilograms (350 pounds) and used 35 kilograms of pumpkin, 16 kilograms of sugar, 12 dozen eggs and took six hours to bake.
This giant isn't the 1,190-kilogram pumpkin (it weighs a mere 1,008 kilograms), but the young man pictured here grew that record-breaker as well. Mathias Willemijns seems to have the magic touch when it comes to pumpkins!Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Gollnow
3. A Halloween tradition
In the US, pumpkin sales spike around Halloween. There's hardly any child in the US who hasn't carved a scary smile into the orange-colored squash and turned it into a jack-o'-lantern, lighting up their front stoop or window. The tradition of pumpkin carving was brought to the US from Ireland by immigrants in the 1800s.
The term jack-o'-lantern is said to come from the legend of a man named Jack who tricked the devil into not taking him to hell once he died. But he wasn't good enough to make it into heaven either, so he was doomed to wander around with only a hollowed turnip with coal inside to light his way. The Irish used to carve and light up turnips to keep wandering spirits like Jack away. Once in the US, they turned to pumpkins instead.
Hooligan, Pleasure Dome, and Orange Smoothie — yes, those are all pumpkins, of which there are more than 45 different species! Not all pumpkins are alike. Some are warty, some are smooth and each variety serves a different purpose. There are pumpkins perfect for pie, others for roasting and some that are better left intact to adorn your front porch.
Not all pumpkins are round and orange!Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Bildfunk/S. Gollnow
5. Healthy culinary delights
Pumpkins are considered a fruit, not a vegetable. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, a fruit is "the usually edible reproductive body of a seed plant." Vegetables on the other hand are the edible portions of plants like leaves, stems, roots and bulbs. Pumpkins are the fruit of the pumpkin vine — and extremely delicious. Traditional delicacies include pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup and pumpkin bread. You can roast the seeds and snack on them, and you can even eat the plant's flowers. They're great for when you're fighting a cold because they contain lots of vitamin C. In fact, the entire pumpkin is basically a super food!
"Half a cup of pumpkin provides 200 percent of the current recommendation for vitamin A, along with lutein and zeaxanthin, which are pigments that promote eye health," according to food and nutrition specialist Julie Garden-Robinson. "Pumpkins are rich in potassium, which helps our muscles contract and nerves fire."
Soup and jack-o'-lanterns: Germany's fall pumpkin obsession
Spotting pumpkins is a sure sign it's autumn in Germany. But pumpkin patches and jack-o'-lanterns are still less common in Germany than in the US. Here's a closer look at the meaning of pumpkins at this time of year.
Image: Imago/CTK Photo/R. Petrasek
Pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere
Pumpkins pop up everywhere in Germany come October - sometimes in the oddest of formations. This "pumpkosaurus" is part of an exhibition at Krewelshof in Mechernich in western Germany. Some 48,000 gourds were formed into such artistic sculptures here, while another 25,000 were used purely for decoration.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Japanese gourds
The red kuri squash (known in Europe as a Hokkaido pumpkin) is by far the most popular in Germany. You'll find mounds of them at the supermarkets. While they tend to grow in more arid regions like California, South Africa and, of course, Japan, they are also homegrown in Germany. However, the tradition of annual trips to the pumpkin patch is actually not a big deal here it is in the US.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Skip dessert
In the US, where pumpkins are native, the orange gourds are most often associated with pumpkin pie, which is typically eaten on Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. In Germany, you won't find pumpkin pie anywhere, not even pumpkin muffins. Here, pumpkins are most often used in savory dishes like pumpkin soup.
Image: picture-alliance/CHROMORANGE/S. Bogdanski
Savor the seeds
In Germany, it's not just the meat of the pumpkin that lands on the table, but there'S also an appreciation for the seeds. Pumpkin seeds are a common addition in bread and rolls, which can be found in many German bakeries.
Image: Fotolia/IrisArt
Say cheese!
Ever tried to carve a red kuri squash? Their skin is particular hard to cut through. The practice of carving pumpkins - a common Halloween tradition in the US - has only been around in Germany for some 25 years. You'd be hard-pressed to find a red kuri jack-o'-lantern in the US. In Germany, they're a common type gourd, though larger Halloween pumpkins can also be found in some supermarkets.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Warnecke
US import
Halloween first came to Germany in the early 1990s. After the Iraq War broke out in 1991, Carnival celebrations were canceled the next month - out of respect. Costume sellers apparently tried to make up for the loss by promoting Halloween later that fall; it took a few years for the US celebration of ghosts and gouls to really take off. These jack-o'-lanterns were spotted in Brandenburg last year.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/P. Pleul
Hey Jack
Halloween is said to have begun in Ireland and was brought to the US by Irish immigrants in the 19th century. The jack-o'-lantern takes its name from the legend of a man named Jack, who tricked the devil into not taking him to hell. When he died, heaven apparently didn't want him either, so his soul was homeless. In Ireland, turnips were carved and lit to chase away wandering spirits like Jack's.
Image: Getty Images/Afp/T. Sloan
Trumpkin
Turnips were replaced by pumpkins in the US, where they are native. There, jack-o'-lantern designs know no boundaries. Presidential hopeful Donald Trump, pictured on a pumpkin displayed in Los Angeles, is an obvious choice for this year's carvers. Some people in Germany also place a jack-o'-lantern in front of their home during the week before Halloween, but how many will feature Trump this year?
Image: Getty Images/AFP/M. Ralston
Hello, Hillary
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is featured on this elaborately decorated pumpkin featured this month at the "Rise of the Jack-o'-Lanterns" shows in Los Angeles. In the US, the variety of pumpkin most often used for carving is the large, light orange Jack-O'-Lantern type. These can sometimes be found in Germany, but are not that common.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/M. Ralston
Political pumpkins
In the US, it's not uncommon for jack-o'-lanterns to get political - just like Carnival floats in Germany. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are featured on these less than flattering gourds at Madame Tussauds in New York. Is it a compliment for your face to land on a pumpkin? It remains to be seen whether Chancellor Merkel will feature on Germany's jack-o'-lanterns this year.
Image: Getty Images/C. Ord
Germany's largest pumpkin
While the art of pumpkin carving is still catching on in Germany, the art of pumpkin growing has long been mastered. Matthias Würsching, pictured above in Ludwigsburg, won this year's German championship with his 901-kilo (1,986-pound) white pumpkin.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Ch. Schmidt
California heavyweight
The German winner is even heavier than the first-place pumpkin at the famous Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival in California. This year's winning gourd tipped the scales at 1,910 pounds - claiming a prize of $11,460 for its grower, an elementary school teacher from Washington. Half Moon Bay, a small beach town, has dubbed itself the World Pumpkin Capital.
Image: picture-alliance/AA/T. Coskun
Musical pumpkin pumpkin
While Germany adopted Halloween from the US only recently (which had earlier adopted the holiday from Ireland), Germany is most certainly one of the leading countries in the world for heavy metal music. It's also home to the world's largest metal festival, Wacken Open Air. Top German heavy metal outfit "Helloween" draws on the holiday's gruesome connotations, using a jack-o'-lantern as its logo.