Pumpkin Patch

October is the month for pumpkins. Last weekend, we took advantage of the good weather to visit the Way Fruit Farm, which hosted its annual Fall Apple Festival. Whilst we saw rows and rows of apple trees and handpicked some apples from the trees, today I would like to focus on our visit to the pumpkin patch in this blog entry.

We rode on a wagon pulled by a tractor to reach the pumpkin patch, where

everyone excitedly went about selecting and picking their own pumpkins.

Question: Is pumpkin a fruit or a vegetable?

I took a candid shot of four kids happily showing off their pumpkins (with moms in the background still deliberating who should pay for the pumpkins, which cost 37 cents a pound. 1-2-Zoom).

What do Americans do with their pumpkins? They hollowed out the pumpkins and carve them into lanterns, called "jack-o-lantern" for Halloween. This practice is based on an ancient Celtic custom brought to America by Irish immigrants. The pumpkin carvings are then placed on windowsills or porches. Why? It is very much like the Chinese placing a lion statute outside the door of their house... to ward off evil spirits as well as to welcome home the spirits of deceased ancestors.

.An interesting photo of EAST meets WEST at the Webb mansion.

Spritual Application: In the biblical story of Moses and the Egyptian Pharaoh, God commanded the Hebrews to take the blood of an innocent sheep and put it on the door-frames of their homes as a sign. That night, the plague of death passed over their houses but all the firstborn in Egypt were strucked down. The Feast of the Passover thus became an annual holiday to celebrate Israel's deliverance from Egypt and to remind the people of what God had done. In today's context, we Christians take the Holy Communion as a Passover remembrance of our deliverance and new life in Christ, who took our place as the sacrificial lamb.

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