Last Friday here at the GA Headquarters we decided to combine our beloved weekly Beer O’Clock session with some early festivities in celebration of Halloween. With mulled wine flowing and some dubious Halloween tunes on the speakers we all sat down to see whose carving skills would steal the show.
Much like with cases of sibling rivalry round the Monopoly board at Christmas, the activity brought out peoples competitive side and insults and accusations of plagiary began flying across the carving table.
Learn about some of our competitors in our Meet The Team Blogs.
As the competition continued conversation turned to the tradition of pumpkins at Halloween and where this originated from. With fairly limited knowledge on the subject we turned to Google for answers and here’s what we learnt:
In the 17th century it was common to hollow out gourd-like vegetables such a turnips and pumpkins, and place a candle inside to use a lantern, their use at Halloween however stems from Irish folklore and the story of a drunken deal with the devil turned sour. After thinking he could outsmart The Devil, Stingy Jack was banished from both heaven and hell and doomed to walk the earth for all eternity with only a dimly lit pumpkin lantern to guide his way. In fear of the cursed spirit of Stingy Jack, Irishmen would carve scary faces into lanterns and leave them outside their homes to scare his spirit away.
Back to the competition and with rivalry between departments and the realisation that I’d completely forgotten to buy any tea lights, tensions were running high.
With a quick dash to the shop for candles later the carving was complete and the festivities continued.
The competition was so close; it was a tough call to name the winner of the first Annual GA Carving Competition but with his simplistic and eerie design the prize went to Soren Arlev, who can be pictured below looking even scarier than his pumpkin.
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