Christmas Pumpkin

It’s Christmas time and you know what that means? It’s time to decorate the Christmas Pumpkin! Yippee! I remember when I was just knee high to a grasshopper anxiously waiting for the month of December so I could break out the knives and scoops and decorate my festive pumpkin. It was always a great tradition and I honored it this year by carving the IRR patch in it. I know I’m not home for Christmas, but having my holiday pumpkin makes me feel like the Christmas Spirit has found me in Iraq.


Okay, so this is merely the product of my ignorance and laziness; ignorance because when my work sent me this foam pumpkin in my Halloween box I didn’t know you could carve and laziness because even after I had the knowledge that you could cut into it, I didn’t do anything with it until this last week (6 weeks after Halloween). I can’t take too much credit for the design as Tom actually had the idea of putting the IRR patch on it and he made the template and Stacey provided the flickering LED lamp that sits inside of it. I simply put pen knife to foam and put the Santa hat on it. It sits next to my fiber optic Christmas tree on my desk along with a myriad of cards and knick-knacks to help me get into the spirit of the holidays. Part of me just wants to forget that it is Christmas and just skip this year because I’m not home. But that part conflicts with the part of me that enjoys Christmas. So, since I can’t string lights up around my house and trim the tree in the window, I will clutter my desk with paper snowmen and bendable Santas and try to forget that I’m deployed.