Summerween is a made-up holiday created by Alex Hirsch and is featured in the animated television show Gravity Falls, where the townspeople celebrate Halloween twice a year, once in October and once in the summer. The summer celebration is called “Summerween,” and this year the date falls on Monday, June 22. The holiday has been popularized through social media as a way to celebrate with friends, by both Gravity Falls fans and Halloween lovers alike. This raises the question, though, of what makes up Summerween.

Jack-’o-Melons

The carved watermelon with a candle inside, similar to a jack-o’-lantern, is a staple of the Gravity Falls episode Summerween. It embodies both the spooky nature of Halloween and the colors of summer. My recommendation to achieve this would be to carve it out just like you would a pumpkin, just adding the additional step of scooping out the red watermelon and saving it for later. Even if carving a watermelon is too much of a challenge to take on, you could always Sharpie on a spooky face onto the outside rind of a watermelon and cut open the watermelon to eat later.

Spooky Summer Foods

There are lots of ways you can make food perfect for Summerween. For example, cutting a pumpkin face into a slice of cheese and then using it for a cheeseburger. Additionally, combining vanilla ice cream and orange Fanta would create a very pumpkin colored dessert, and it would be a perfect cold food for the extreme Florida sun. Another idea could be making your own pizza and using toppings such as cheese, pepperoni, peppers, etc. to create pictures of Halloween’s ghouls, such as ghosts or spiders.

Summerween Candy

Even though a decent chunk of the episode talks about the off-brand or “loser” candy, it doesn’t mean you have to buy it. Some candies such as sweet tart ropes, watermelon sour patch kids and starburst would be perfect contenders for a Summerween party. The bright colors with the summer flavors help develop the theme of Summerween, combining one of the popular aspects of Halloween with the refreshing palette of summer. This could work especially well with a Halloween themed bowl or cup to hold the candy to add to the theme.

Apart from this, there are tons of ideas that you could do for Summerween on media platforms such as Pinterest and TikTok, like using plastic skeletons and dressing them up in a leis and sunglasses. Even without anything listed above, Summerween is the perfect day to get together with some friends to enjoy summer, or in the words of one of the main characters of the show, Grunkle Stan, “Summerween isn’t about candy or costumes. Or even scaring people. It’s a day the whole family can get together at one place and celebrate what really matters: pure evil.”