Staff Writer- Izabell Newman

Midterms are over, and the holidays are fast approaching. While we may be stressing about next semester’s schedules, commuting to home and back, and whatever else may be on our minds, it is important to take time to relax this Thanksgiving — and what better way to do that than by enjoying a slice of pumpkin pie!

Pumpkin pie is easily the best holiday dessert. You may be asking yourself how this humble pie could possibly beat other classic holiday desserts like gingerbread, sugar cookies, or whatever “figgy pudding” is. But the numbers do not lie: Americans love pumpkin pie. According to Hausch and Company, fifty million pumpkin pies are eaten during Thanksgiving. But as we know, the pumpkin pie enjoys a much longer life span than the few days we spend home on break. Pumpkin pies are usually consumed between the months of October and December, with some leftovers still being eaten into the month of January. It is safe to say that this festive time of year is truly the season of pumpkin pie.

Pumpkin pie was not always the popular desert we know and love today. In fact, pumpkins were once nothing special. They enjoyed cultivation by Indigenous peoples across North and Central America, being made into various dishes and medicines. The pumpkin pie we are familiar with today began English colonial settlements in North America. Pies have a long, long history in the British Isles as a staple dish. Not only did they bake desert pies, but practically anything could be turned into a pie: meat pies, fruit pies, and so on and so forth. The English loved pies, and so it was only fitting for the settlers to use the “new” fruit (yes, pumpkin is a fruit) for this purpose. With the abundance of pumpkins in the Americas, the dish soon became a staple of the colonial diet. The saying “as American as apple pie” should really be “as American as pumpkin pie,” because pumpkins originated in the Americas, and apples did not! Pumpkin pie is as American as a pie can be!

That being said, we must also consider the downsides of American pumpkin culture. Because of the high-demand, millions of pumpkins every year end up rotting in landfills rather than filling our stomachs. If you have a pumpkin to discard, make sure to dispose of it via composting rather than tossing it with regular trash. “Pumpkin spice” is also a popular, albeit misleading, flavoring during this time of the year. For example, the syrup used in Starbuck’s famous “pumpkin spice latte” contains less than two per cent pumpkin puree. The rest of the flavor comes from other spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. In fact, the famous “pumpkin flavor” we know and love isn’t really pure pumpkin, but rather a mixture of herbs and spices. However, we can’t totally fault the makers of these products because the traditional pumpkin pie recipe does call for certain spices like nutmeg. Pumpkin pies? More like pumpkin lies.

All of this to say, it’s just a silly desert. Does it really matter what we call it as long as it tastes delicious? Can we really hate the pumpkin and if it unites us once a year around a table, forks and whip cream at the ready? Pumpkin pie is a truly all-American dessert, and is perhaps one of the only things we can all agree is a net positive for our country. So this Thanksgiving, gather ‘round the dinner table with your loved ones and share a pie with them. Sometimes, it is the most simple things that can mean the most.