The Krampus Pumpkin: A Completely Normal Harvest
If you've ever wondered how Krampus gets the enormous pumpkins he uses for his Halloween operations, there's a simple answer:
He grows them.
Of course, because this is Krampus we're talking about, "growing pumpkins" is considerably more complicated than planting seeds and waiting for October.
For starters, Krampus pumpkins don't have seeds.
They're completely hollow inside.
Instead, the pumpkin's life cycle begins with something considerably stranger: the shadow face.
When a mature pumpkin is harvested, its shadow face separates from the pumpkin and falls into the soil. From there, a new sprout emerges and begins growing into the next pumpkin.
It's less like ordinary agriculture and more like a very badly designed version of a Phoenix.
The pumpkin itself doesn't immediately decay after harvesting. The vines are what eventually die back and decay, returning material to the soil. And when those vines finally begin breaking down, they produce a distinctly unpleasant sulfur smell.
Krampus considers this a perfectly normal sign of a healthy cycle.
Humans generally do not.
Then The Pumpkin Gets Ripe
A young pumpkin stays rooted where it grows.
A ripe pumpkin is different.
Once it reaches full maturity, it develops an entire vine body—arms, legs, and long vines capable of whipping at anything that gets too close.
Most importantly, it can finally unroot itself and walk around.
Not forever, though.
A ripe pumpkin can only remain unrooted for a limited amount of time before it needs to return to the ground and root itself again.
This is why Krampus plants his pumpkins far apart.
Not because he's worried about them competing for sunlight.
Because he doesn't want to fight two of them at once.
Harvesting Is Simple
Krampus has a very specific harvesting procedure.
Approach the pumpkin.
Don't let it see you.
Trip it.
Cut the vines.
Harvest the pumpkin.
That's it.
The armor, sword, and extensive protective equipment are simply there because Krampus believes in proper agricultural safety.
To an employee watching for the first time, however, it looks suspiciously like they've wandered into an RPG and accidentally triggered a boss fight.
A giant pumpkin charges.
Vines whip through the air.
Krampus is wearing armor and carrying a sword.
Then he trips the pumpkin, cuts its vines, and calmly loads the giant pumpkin onto the cart.
Harvest complete.
The employee is usually left wondering why their agricultural job suddenly involved fighting a giant plant creature.
Krampus doesn't see the problem.
To him, it's just pumpkin season.
And Then There's The Pumpkin Pie
Krampus also makes his own pumpkin pie.
This is where the humans learned another important lesson:
Krampus cannot taste food the way humans do.
After centuries of eating ingredients from the demi-world—plants that grow in extremely hot environments—his tolerance for intense flavors has become ridiculous.
So when Krampus makes a pumpkin pie, he seasons it according to what tastes good to him.
Pepper.
Chili.
Spices.
More pepper.
And then more seasoning because he still can't taste enough.
The human employees eventually had to develop a human version of his recipes.
Not because Krampus wanted a milder pie.
Because the original recipe was not considered safe for human taste buds.
At one point they even tried different wooden spoons.
Hardwood lasted longer.
Then they discovered something unfortunate:
Burning hardwood adds flavor.
So they switched to long stirring sticks.
A twelve-foot stirring stick can survive approximately three minutes of Krampus's cooking before the exposed end has burned away enough that somebody has to replace it.
Eventually they started using metal.
The metal doesn't burn.
It just gets extremely hot.
Krampus considers this an improvement.
The employees remain unconvinced.
And that's the Krampus pumpkin cycle:
A hollow pumpkin grows from a shadow.
The mature pumpkin grows a vine body.
The pumpkin unroots itself and walks.
Krampus chases it down.
The pumpkin gets tripped.
The vines are cut.
The pumpkin is harvested.
The shadow face starts the next generation.
The old vines eventually return to the soil smelling like sulfur.
Completely normal.
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