I Believe In the Great Pumpkin Do You?

If you are reading this near the kiddos please send them away! This is FOR YOUR EYES ONLY!!!

My Version of the GREAT PUMPKIN

About 15 years ago or so I read a Dear Abby type article in the newspaper… It was about a creature called the “GREAT PUMPKIN”… I don’t remember much of the original story as I modified it for my own purposes that very Halloween. My oldest daughter was about 4 at the time…

The common Halloween candy dilemma is the kids go trick or treating, they get a ton of candy and they want to eat it all… but you don’t want them to eat too much of it… you don’t want to save it… and you don’t want it around to tempt you to eat it! My solution was to take the original story I read about the “GREAT PUMPKIN” and I created this basic story for my children…

On Halloween night after all of the trick or treating has been done and the kids have come home to check out their loot the child must decide what candy they will keep. They put the candy they want to give to the Great Pumpkin in a bag with their name on it. This bag gets put on the front porch and at some point during the night the Great Pumpkin comes around and picks it up. Now the Great Pumpkin knows (just like Santa knows) how much candy the child has given in proportion to how much they have received… make sure the kids know this…it is the most important part!

The following night the Great Pumpkin comes around and drops off a gift on the porch for the child (after dinner usually worked for me) , it is VERY important to set the precedent of a small donation = small gift, big donation = big gift! My “big” gifts maxed out at $20…

Remember

Don’t let the kids see you pick up the candy from the front porch… I have my hubby put it in his car that night and take it to work where it “donates” it!

Make sure you get an appropriate gift based on how much candy they gave up.

Don’t wrap the gift, if you have more than one child write their name on the gift in handwriting they won’t recognize… seriously kids know these things!

Don’t make the GREAT PUMPKIN a scary guy… you know like the Headless Horseman or something… he’s supposed to be friendly

When we moved to a new neighborhood 3 years ago my daughter, who was 7 at the time, was talking to her friends on the bus about the Great Pumpkin and asking how much candy they were going to give him etc.… (Funny huh?) well needless to say I got a few phone calls from my neighbors so I explained to them the deal in case they wanted to try this too… let me tell you those kids wanted to give away candy and get a gift for sure!

Anytime my daughter asks why no one else knows about the Great Pumpkin I say a lot of people do, just not everyone… so far that has satisfied her… but she is still pissed at her Dad for making her believe that he could magically start the fireplace by blowing on it… she eventually found out it was a gas fireplace with a switch on the wall… YIKES!

Anyway, every year my girls LOVE giving to and getting from the GREAT PUMPKIN! It has been the perfect solution for my family and I hope that by passing on this story it might just be the perfect solution for other families as well! Do you have a good story you’d like to share?

As always thanks for stopping by!

Until next time…