Thing #16 that I love about Geneva - Pumpkins from the Ferme de Merlinge

Halloween is the holy of holies. I pick and choose selectively what I want to transmit from my culture to my son, and top most on the list is Halloween.

Halloween has tepidly been introduced to Geneva, but more than anything, it is a commercial experience and lacks sense. People seem to be a bit confused by the whole thing. No one has really celebrated it here before so people aren't always sure how to "do it right". There is also (quite fairly) a certain amount of animosity, with people feeling that they are having an "American" holiday foisted on them with the associated imperative to buy more crap they don't need.

Despite all this though, our annual Halloween party, since it is considered to be a "real Halloween party" thrown by Americans, is a big date in the social calendar of my son's friends.

Every year, a couple of weeks before Halloween, we head out to the Ferme de Merlinge in Gy to buy our pumpkin. Winter squash is abundantly available in the supermarkets here but pumpkins can sometimes be a bit more of a challenge to find. Europeans largely consider pumpkins something you would feed to the pigs, not to the people. I understand. I mean there are some amazing varieties of squash that are just superb, but I still accuse Europeans of being a bit snobby on this issue and in defense of the modest pumpkin would say, "dem's good eatin'!".

Be ye proud, Americans! Eat not your pumpkins in silent shame! But stand up loud and proud and say, "I'm a pumpkin eater and proud of it!".