Only the knife knows what goes on in the heart of a pumpkin.

-- Simone Schwarz-Bart

Sometimes traditions just aren't worth it.

I speak of this coming weekend's Halloween festivities and the annual expectation that homeowners carve a face on a real-life pumpkin, jab a candle inside and light it up.

I don't know about you, but I have long since dispensed with that little holiday chore.

It's like hard-boiling, then dyeing Easter eggs.

It's like roasting and slicing a Thanksgiving turkey.

It's like tromping all over some forested hill with an ax and bringing back my own Christmas tree.

It's like too much trouble.

Besides, pumpkin goop stinks.

Oh, I admit, it was sort of fun when my son was much younger and delighted as he and Dad got to play with knives and perform what we called brain surgery on Mr. Pumpkin's head.

The knife sliced nicely through the round, orange scalp and then he would cheerfully giggle as he shoved his chubby, little fists inside the husk to scoop out handfuls of stringy, slimy, seed-filled pumpkin entrails.

But it's a mess.

And I was always leery afterward about leaving it on the porch with a burning candle inside. "October blaze destroys house!" I imagined the headline saying.

"Stupid homeowner left pumpkin candle unattended," it would add.

A lesser issue, but no less important, was that I could never carve the pumpkin face as creatively as the professionals do in magazine articles about creative pumpkin carving.

The knife just didn't cut it that way.

No, I usually ended up with the standard three triangles and a snaggle grin with a couple of teeth.

Each year, this effort impressed my son less and less.

And now he never looks.

That's because now my Halloween Jack always looks the same. A few years ago, I bought one at the store with an electric cord in the back.

Halloween starts. I get it out of the attic, put it on the porch and plug it in.

Halloween ends. I unplug it and pitch it back into the attic.

I think this is the future.

Artificial pumpkins with electric lights will become more and more like artificial Christmas trees -- popular because they take less time to set up, and once you buy one, you've bought all you'll ever need.

But if you feel the need to eviscerate a real pumpkin, scrape out its cranium and slow-roast it from the inside with a candle ... well, I recommend finding a child with which to share the experience. That's the best part of most holidays, anyway.