What If Pumpkin Spice Could Change the World?

Toni Peters. September 22, 2026.

It’s September 15th. I know this because my phone told me, and because every establishment within a thirty-mile radius has declared it, officially, fall.

Never mind that it’s ninety-four degrees outside. Never mind that I’m sweating through my shirt in the Target parking lot. The signs have spoken. Pumpkin. Spice. Season. Is. Here.

And I have questions.

We have lost our ever-loving minds

Somewhere, at some point, some person in some test kitchen took a squash. A squash! And turned it into a personality. And it worked. Boy, did it work. What started as one seasonal drink became a billion-dollar empire and, I’m convinced, a national personality disorder. We have pumpkin spice coffee, fine. We also have pumpkin spice cereal, pumpkin spice hummus, pumpkin spice dog treats, and pumpkin spice deodorant. Somebody out there is spraying gourd under their arms and calling it self-care.

We have lost our ever-loving minds. Completely.

There are grown adults setting phone reminders for the drink to come back. There are group texts, I’ve seen them, with a countdown. People who can’t agree on anything, who won’t so much as make eye contact at Thanksgiving, will drop every last grievance the second that orange cup returns. First sip and they close their eyes like they’re hearing from God.

I roll my eyes at all of it. Every year.

And then every year, around the last week of October, I catch myself.

The wanting is the whole event

Because here’s what I notice when I stop rolling my eyes long enough to look. For a few weeks, otherwise cynical, exhausted, buttoned-up people let themselves want something. Out loud. With their whole chest. No apology. A grown woman will sit in a drive-thru line twenty cars deep for a paper cup of warm sugar and feel not one ounce of shame about it. Do you know how rare that is?

We’re so careful the rest of the year. We downplay what we want. We act like we don’t need much, like wanting something small and good and a little bit silly is something to be embarrassed about. Heads down. Wanting nothing out loud.

Then fall shows up and hands us permission to be delighted by a beverage. And we take it! We take it every single time.

The pumpkin’s just the excuse.
The wanting is the whole event.

So maybe the mania is trying to tell us something.

What if we let ourselves want the other stuff that loud? The rest. The quiet morning with nobody needing anything from us. The phone call to the friend we keep meaning to call. The dream we’ve got filed under “someday” because saying it out loud feels like too much. What if we chased those the way we chase a limited-time latte?

I’m not telling you pumpkin spice is going to fix the world. It can barely fix a Tuesday.

But a little thing that gives millions of tired people permission to feel good, together, for no reason other than it’s here and it’s warm and they love it? That might be the most powerful thing on the whole menu.

So enjoy your latte. Set the countdown. And while you’ve got permission to want something small and warm with your whole heart, go want something bigger the exact same way.

See you in the drive-thru line.