A classic Halloween tradition was celebrated with a Hawaiian twist on Thursday, Oct. 24 as students gathered together at the Hale Pavilion for a pineapple carving event. In an ode to the classic jack-o’-lantern, participants fused Hawaii with Halloween as they hollowed out and then carved faces into pineapples.
McKenna Bohn, an event participant and freshman from Arizona majoring in health and human performance, said, “This was a perfect Halloween event to have here in Hawaii. In my family, we have an annual pumpkin carving contest so when I heard there was going to be pineapple carving I got super excited. It’s a perfect Hawaiian twist on our Halloween tradition.”
Stating the idea behind putting the event on, Sierra Rasmussen, a junior majoring in elementary education and residential advisor (RA) from California, said, “We’re in Hawaii so pumpkins are a little harder to come by, and being in Hawaii we have so many pineapples here. We thought using pineapples would put a fun twist on Halloween here in Hawaii.”
Approximately 50 people attended the event and participants were given pineapples to carve faces into. The pineapple carvings were used to make smoothies for attendees to enjoy.
Describing the pineapple carving process, Bohn said, “We’re carving pineapples the same way you would carve a pumpkin. We cut off the top, dig out all the insides and then we carved our own design on the pineapple. It took maybe 20 minutes total.
“For the face I carved out, I was trying to do a traditional jack-o’-lantern on my pineapple and I think it turned out good. It looks pretty much like a jack-o’-lantern, except it’s a pineapple instead.”
Rasmussen said she was happy with how the event was received by students and was surprised with the amount of people who arrived. “We started planning this a while ago, but we did not think this many people were going to show up. We thought we might have had 10 people come to the event tonight because it’s a Thursday night and during the school week.”
According to Rasmussen, the RAs organized the event and split into committees with specific goals to help those in our Hales. The committee who organized this event is called the Connect Committee, a group that tries to put on fun events to help students know each other.
Another participant, Kendall Facey, a sophomore majoring in communications from California, said this event should definitely continue and be made a tradition at BYUH. “It doesn’t feel like Halloween sometimes being here at school, but this was definitely a fun twist on getting us into the spirit.”
Facey said she enjoys attending these events because she can meet people. “These events bring students together. You get to meet more people by doing these things.”
After seeing how popular the event was, Rasmussen said, “Everyone really enjoyed coming tonight. This is an event we’re hoping we can keep doing every year and make a tradition here at BYUH.”