One of the most popular Halloween traditions is carving Jack-o’-lanterns into pumpkins. The term was originally applied to people: in 1663 it was the name given to a man with a lantern or a night watchman. After 10 years, this began to be the name given to the mysterious lights that are sometimes visible at night over the swamps.
The light actually comes from gases from decaying vegetation, but in the absence of a scientific explanation, people have been telling their own stories about the origins of these lights for centuries. In Ireland since the 1500s, these stories often revolved around a blacksmith called Stingy Jack.
Halloween jack-o’-lantern: how did this tradition start?
Author: Daria Sidorova
The Legend of Gathering Jack
A blacksmith named Stingy Jack invited the devil to drink together. Stingy Jack didn’t want to pay for the drinks out of his own pocket and persuaded the devil to turn himself into a coin that could be used to pay.
The devil agreed, but Jack did not pay the bill, but put the coin in his pocket, where there was a silver cross, so that the devil could not return to his original form. In the end, Jack let the devil go, but on the condition that he would not take revenge on him and would not take his soul after death.
A scary turnip on display at the Irish Museum of Country Life. Photo in text: Wikimedia Commons
Later, Jack tricked the devil again by tricking him into climbing a tree to pick some fruit and then carving a cross into the trunk to prevent the devil from coming down. Jack released him again on the same condition: the devil would not take revenge on him and would not take his soul.
When Stingy Jack died, God did not let him into heaven, and the devil, keeping his word, rejected Jack’s soul at the gates of hell. Instead, the devil gave him one burning coal to light the way and sent him off into the night to “search for his hell.” Jack put a piece of coal in a carved turnip and has been wandering the Earth with it ever since. Residents of Ireland said that the mysterious lights in the swamps were an improvised Jack-o-lantern, whose soul wanders around the surrounding area.
Why were turnips replaced with pumpkin?
Irish immigrants brought the legend to the United States, where it encountered another tradition and culture.
In the British Isles there was a tradition of making lamps from vegetables – charcoal and stone coals or candles were placed in carved turnips, beets and potatoes. This is how the harvest was celebrated in the fall. Sometimes children wandered along the road with a glowing vegetable, pretending to be Stingy Jack or another lost soul to prank friends and travelers.
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There were quite a lot of pumpkins in America, and they were convenient for carving lanterns. The vegetable has become part of the tradition. Over time, children began carving scary faces into pumpkins to make the lanterns more frightening and look like disembodied heads. By the mid-1800s, these pumpkins began to be called jack-o’-lanterns or jack-o’-lanterns.
By the late 19th century, jack-o’-lanterns had become a standard seasonal decoration. In 1892, the mayor of Atlanta held a Halloween party where glowing pumpkins with carved faces were used as decoration, ending Jack-O-Lantern’s wanderings.
Cover photo: RichLegg /
Source: rb.ru
