Give Halloween a tropical twist with pineapple jack-o-lanterns

By the time Oct. 31 finally arrives, Halloween-lovers have already spent months thinking of costume ideas and arranging their spooky decorations while drinking gallons of apple cider and deciding which scary movies to watch this year.

Once the costumes are ordered (don’t forget fun outfits for your furry friends!), it’s time to find the perfect pumpkin for carving. Every Halloween, carved pumpkins emerge on doorsteps and no one ever questions why other objects aren’t used to carve ghoulish faces illuminated by candles or lights.

But this year, why not try a pineapple in place of a pumpkin?

Why a pineapple? The first and most obvious reason is this: Pineapples are adorable! If you want to add some hip, tropical flair to your Halloween this year, carving a pineapple is the way to go.

Pineapples are easy to find in most grocery stores, and they generally have flat bottoms, which make them easy to stand up on your porch. And you can be just as creative when carving a pineapple as you are with a pumpkin.

Twitter user @chellefontaine gave their pineapple jack-o-lantern a flirty, romantic vibe by placing an elegant flower on its head and photographing it on the beach at sunset.

And although pineapple jack-o-lanterns are automatically cute with their goofy, spiky “hair,” you can easily make these fruits into scary Halloween creations, right on par with the garish faces that typically grin out from pumpkins.

As an example of a scary pineapple, the photo in @Fredosphere’s tweet features a pineapple jack-o-lantern with angry eyebrows and a ghoulish frown.

The true benefit of carving pineapples instead of pumpkins, of course, is the deliciousness factor. After all, not everyone loves pumpkin seeds, but how yummy is fresh-cut pineapple?

The process of carving a pineapple jack-o-lantern is just like carving a pumpkin, though the fruit of the pineapple may need to be sliced with a knife and then scooped out with a spoon or fork. And then it will need to be enjoyed in a fruit salad or tossed in the blender for a special Halloween piña colada.

Then, you can carve the shapes of the face, set a candle inside the jack-o-lantern and top it all off with the pineapple’s spiky hat. All you need at that point is a steel-drum version of “Thriller” and you’ve got yourself a tropical Halloween.

If you can’t decide on a side to take in the pineapple vs. pumpkin debate, you can always have both and start a new trend. For Halloween 2019, Twitter user @AmyCrewsWrites proved that the two different vessels can be spooky and whimsical when set out side by side.

You could also try your hand at carving Halloween visages into other fruits and vegetables, like peppers, watermelon or butternut squash.

Here’s to a fun — and dare I say, fruitful — Halloween.