Loco Avocado: Washington, DC: The perfect pumpkin man for Halloween

Actually, he's more of a pumpkin head, rather than a pumpkin man.

I'm referring to Jack o'lantern of course, every American family's halloween friend. You can get him at the grocery store, or at a pumpkin patch, dig out his insides and then carve him to pieces, stick a candle inside his guts and get him to guard your door at night.

Halloween is really the ang moh version of the Chinese 7th Month or Hungry Ghosts Festival. Except in a more commercial and consumerist way.

The ancient Celts believed that masks and costumes were needed to ward off harmful spirits and protect oneself. The word "Halloween" can be traced back to 16th Century Old English, to the eve of All Hallows Day (modern day All Saints Day).

These days, Halloween has become such an integral part of mainstream American culture, that partying on Oct 31st is a social expectation, rather than anything spiritually inclined.

And mind you, the costumes these days, are no longer scary-looking to ward off evil spirits. People get all creative - bunny suits, TV personalities, movie characters, naughty nurses...and the list goes on. The more creative your costume, the more candy you get trick or treating!

Families dress their houses with enough paraphernalia to make you think you just walked onto the street where Addams Family lived. Every street I drove by had at least one house with a huge cobweb and a larger-than-life tarantula (in various strange colours) hovering above the front porch.

Halloween means real business in America.

Unfortunately I was going to be on the plane back to Singapore on Halloween night itself, and so, to make up for my party loss, my wonderful Cater family took me with them to the pumpkin patch search for the perfect pumpkin to carve out Jack Cater.

Elsa guarding the Spookies

Several other families were out at the patch also on the same mission as we were. There were tons of pumpkins to pick from - ugly ones (if you wanted a gnarly Jack o'lantern), little ones (for baby Jacks), odd-coloured ones (for diversity) and semi-perfect ones.

A child clearly appropriately dressed for the occasion! Don't lose him in the patch!

Symon only wanted the perfect pumpkin.

After much hunting and jumping and running around the patch, we finally settled on a fairly large and blemish-free pumpkin as the latest member of the Cater family.

It was half Symon's size!

7-year-old Symon wrestling with his chosen pumpkin

The cutest part of the whole process is that there were little wagons that you could put your heavy pumpkin on to cart to your car.

Symon carting his prized pumpkin to the car

Now, before you can put facial features on Mr Jack, you've got to empty him out of his insides.

Carving the pumpkin is a family affair

And it's a gooey process. Pumpkin has a LOT going on in its crater.

Carving a pumpkin that big is no joke. With much huffing and puffing and a lot of excitable encouragement from the children, Anita carved a hole(large enough for Symon's head to go in! Symon readily plunged his hands into the crater and proceeded to scoop out all the gunk inside.