This time of year brings along warm colors, chilly weather, and everything related to Halloween. As the holiday draws near, more and more houses, apartments, and dorms hold spooky decorations – ghosts, bats, witches, and of course, jack-o’-lanterns. Pumpkins are a well-established staple of the season (because they’re in season), but the history behind carving pumpkins is not well known. Like Halloween itself, carving pumpkins originates with the Celts around 2,000 years ago. It was influenced by a variety of things, most notably, the legend of Stringy Jack and the celebration of Samhain.
There are different versions of the legend of Stringy Jack. The most popular one says Stringy Jack was a mean old man who loved to play tricks on everyone, including the Devil himself. Once, Stringy Jack tricked the Devil to climb up a tree and quickly put crosses on the bottom so the Devil could not get down. In exchange for removing the crosses, Stringy Jack made the Devil promise to not take his soul when he died. The Devil agreed. When Stringy Jack died, he was sent away from Heaven for being too evil, but he wasn’t accepted into Hell either because of his promise. Set to wander the Netherworld between Heaven and Hell, Stringy Jack asked the Devil how he would be able to see without a light. The Devil gave him a fiery ember from Hell. Stringy Jack’s favorite food was turnips and always had one on him, so he carved his out and put the ember in it before roaming the earth forever with his “jack-o’-lantern.”
The Celts believed that during Samhain, the boundary between the living and the dead was blurred. Because of this, they would dress in costumes to ward off spirits. The Celts also carved turnips, rutabagas, gourds, potatoes, and beets and placed a light inside of them to ward off spirits and, on top of that, Stringy Jack.
It wasn’t until the Irish moved to America that the tradition shifted from turnips to pumpkins. The reasoning is very simple. Pumpkins are not native to Ireland, so when Irish people immigrated to America, they quickly found that pumpkins were bigger and easier to carve out, thus starting the pumpkin carving tradition.