Say Hello to the Tradition of the Pumpkin Fairy
Have you heard of the Pumpkin Fairy? Or, the Switch Witch? If you want to discourage your kids from eating all of the unhealthy candy they collect on Halloween night, you might want to start a new family tradition and have the Pumpkin Fairy take their candy in exchange for little toys, trinkets, or other fun stuff.
Last year, my daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes so she wasn’t really looking forward to trick or treating until she heard about the Pumpkin Fairy. Why go collect all of that candy if your Mom won’t let you eat most of it, right? Well, we happened to have a diabetes check-up visit before Halloween and her doctor and nurses told her about how the pumpkin fairy visits kids who can’t or don’t want to eat all of their Halloween candy. According to the story, if you leave your candy out for the pumpkin fairy on Halloween night, she will take it and exchange it for something else – money, little toys, etc.
Well, this was right up my daughter’s imaginative alley so she decided to create a fairy house out of a pumpkin, so the pumpkin fairy would have someplace to sleep on Halloween night. She drew a picture of what the house should look like. As you can see from the photo of the pumpkin house, we didn’t come that close to the drawing. Oh well! My daughter and I had a blast making it together.
You can see the bed and “couch” inside the fairy house that we made out of extra pumpkin pieces. We used a leaf for a blanket. Although not a natural substance, we added a battery tea light to give her some light.
She felt that the pumpkin fairy wouldn’t be traveling alone (who would on Halloween night?) so she left pet treats in the fairy house for the fairy’s two pets, you know, the flying jack o’ lanterns. (I told her they should be flying monkeys but she didn’t like my suggestion.) She wrote a letter to the Pumpkin Fairy about how she had diabetes and wanted to trade in her candy, in case the fairy didn’t understand her rationale for a trade.
Then we went trick or treating in the cold for hours to collect enough “booty” worth trading. Even when it was cold and dark and my son, who is older, had called it quits on trick or treating, my daughter kept going because she wanted A LOT of candy to trade in for a better exchange.
The next morning she was thrilled that the candy was gone. The fairy left her a note and 2 art kits. She was most excited that the fairy’s pets, Spooky and Squash, ate the treats. She felt that building the fairy a house and providing her pets with treats, put her over the edge to get a better exchange. She’s an enterprising young gal and she’s already planning for next year.
Did the pumpkin fairy come to your house? What other Fairies visit your house to provide a fun solution to a parenting challenge?
3 Comments - Leave a comment
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what a wonderful story!! and a great idea
thanks for sharing.
cb
10/4/12
Thanks cb for reading and commenting. Have a fun Halloween season with your family. Sue
Sue Kirchner
10/5/12
[...] but she eats hardly any because she wants a bigger stash to trade in. Read to learn more about the Pumpkin Fairy and how my daughter even built her Fairy a house out of a [...]
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