![]() ![]() A pumpkin is part of the Cucurbitaceae family, which includes almost 1,000 species including cucumbers, cantaloupes, honeydew, and more. ![]() While it is true that people have been carving jack-o’-lanterns for centuries, not all of them were made from pumpkins.Īnd what about that pumpkin? Exactly what is it anyway? Is it a fruit? Is it a squash? Is it a gourd? The answer is yes to all of the above. It is just as easy to imagine children on the Indiana frontier carving pumpkins two hundred years ago the same exact way as children do today. One such tradition is the jack-o’-lantern. Very few holiday traditions remain in their original form. Roaming Stingy Jack is in, after all, what would be considered purgatory.Change is inevitable. Some believe that the Jack-o-Lanterns originated with All Saints’ Day, and represent Christian souls in purgatory. Pumpkin Jack-o-Lanterns have been an integral part of Halloween festivities ever since. When the Irish and Scots immigrated to America, bringing the tradition with them, they found that pumpkins, native to America, made perfect fruits for carving. The Samhain festival marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, the “darker half” of the year. Once this became a Halloween tradition, Jack-o-Lanterns were used as guides for people dressed in costume on Samhain (Oct 31 – Nov 1), a traditional Gaelic version of Halloween, seen as a night when the divide between the worlds of the living and the dead is especially thin. This legend is why people in Ireland and Scotland began to make their own versions of Jack’s lantern by carving grotesque faces into turnips, mangelwurzels, potatoes, and beets, placing them beside their homes to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits and travelers. The Irish began to refer to this spooky figure as “Jack of the Lantern,” which then became “Jack O’Lantern.” He was instead sent into the eternal night, with a burning coal inside a carved-out turnip to light his way. When Jack died, God wouldn’t allow him into heaven and the devil wouldn’t allow him into hell. When he was up in the tree, Jack carved a cross into the trunk so the devil couldn’t come down until he swore he wouldn’t bother Stingy Jack for another ten years. The next year, Jack tricked the devil once more by convincing him to climb up a tree to fetch a piece of fruit. Jack eventually freed the devil under the condition that he wouldn’t bother Jack for one year, and wouldn’t claim Jack’s soul once he died. When the devil obliged, Jack decided he wanted the coin for other purposes and kept it in his pocket alongside a small, silver cross to prevent it from turning back into the devil. Donegal (it now resides at the Irish Museum of Country Life) /bSnnqSBJBmĪs the tale goes, a man called Stingy Jack invited the devil for a drink and convinced him to shape-shift into a coin to pay with. It dates from 1903 and was carved at Baile na Finne, Co. Pumpkins eh? here's proper scary, a traditional Irish Jack-O-Lantern made from a turnip. A ghostly figure of the night, O’Lantern walks with a burning coal inside of a carved-out turnip to light his way. Maoris began carving them for lanterns 700 years ago – the Maori word for “gourd” and “lampshade” are actually the same.Īccording to Irish folklore, a man called Jack O’Lantern was sentenced to roam the earth for eternity. ![]() Gourds were one of the earliest plant species, domesticated by humans around 10,000 years ago, mostly cultivated for their carving potential – for kitchen tools, dishes, musical instruments, toys, furniture and more. They were carved from turnips or beets rather than festive orange pumpkins and were intended to ward off unwanted visitors. A far cry from the grinning pumpkins of Halloween today, the original folklore version of Jack-o-Lanterns, named for Jack O’Lantern of the Irish myth, were actually quite terrifying.
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