Every October two New England cities, Boston, MA and Keene, NH, each hold a Pumpkin Festival. Attendees at either Festival have a chance to view all manner of pumpkin crafts and costume crafts. In fact, sometimes, the attendees at such a Festival like to wear their personal costume crafts. Those crafts might grab attention, but those costumes have not yet earned for residents in New England any sort of record.
Still the achievement of a record can be among the claims made by City authorities in Boston and Keene. Both cities achieved a world record by managing to gather in one place a previously unrecorded number of pumpkin crafts. Both cities achieved a world record by inviting their visiting artisans to light-up the pumpkin crafts on display at one particular Pumpkin Festival.
Both cities have gained added publicity from their mention in the Guinness Book of World Records. Both cities have repeatedly brought into one location a large number of lit pumpkins. Both cities have thus, in different years, managed to
gain Guinness’ notice by having the “most lit pumpkins in one place.”
Both the compilers of the Guinness Book of World Records and the organizers of the two Pumpkin Festivals understand that the jack-o-lantern is one of the most familiar pumpkin crafts. Both the book compilers and the Festival organizers seem to have appreciated the large number of artisans who willingly set-aside times to create a decorative jack-o-lantern. They have appreciated too the eagerness of such artisans to see their decorations both displayed and lighted.
Neither the book compilers nor the Festival organizers may realize how much certain New England farmers also appreciate completed pumpkin crafts. Those farmers, however, have only a minimal interest in seeing the lighted crafts. Those farmers might not have been at either the 2003 record-breaking Festival collection at Keene or the 2006 record-breaking collection at Boston.
So if certain New England farmers did not take an interest in the lighted pumpkins, why then do those same farmers appreciate the existence of the Festivals’ pumpkin crafts? The pig farmers appreciate those crafts, because, once the Festivals are over, those farmers can feed the broken pumpkins to their pigs.
Perhaps someday one New England pig will eat so many pumpkin pieces that that pig will become unusually large. Perhaps someday the owner of one such New England pig will send to Guinness Book of World Records a report about the size of one especially large pig on one particular New England farm.
If that were to happen, then the pumpkin carvers in New England would be able to claim credit for at least three different world records.