Every holiday has its own unique flavor of maimings and maulings, and as we approach Halloween, a government agency has a warning: beware of pumpkin lacerations.
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is in charge of keeping us safe from our own belongings, and its Twitter account often posts darkly funny warnings about common hazards, particularly around the holidays. For Christmas, the commission rolls out burning trees. At the Fourth of July, we can watch fireworks decapitate and dismember dummies. And for Halloween, apparently, we get a cringing pumpkin that warns us about the dangers of slicing up its fellow gourds.
The writer of this warning was not available for comment, so we do not know if they are, in fact, a pumpkin. But cuts from carving jack-o’-lanterns and burns from catching costumes on fire really do top the list of injuries on Halloween, according to a CPSC fact sheet.
The good news is that the CPSC has some tips for how to avoid what it calls “doing a hatchet job to fingers.” One guideline is to not give kids sharp things — which seems like a good rule of thumb, if you want them to keep their thumbs. The bad news is that even if you go with a faux-pumpkin, there’s a risk of getting sliced: last year, Pier 1 imports had to recall thousands of glass pumpkins due to a “laceration hazard.” (Who’d have guessed?)
But here’s the best news: we have more dire warnings about holiday-related injuries to look forward to when the CPSC rolls out its flaming, deep-fried turkeys for Thanksgiving. The holidays are a joyous time of year.