For this reason, the British can also claim ownership to one of the original uses of the phrase jack-o’-lantern. When immigrants brought this custom to North America, pumpkins eventually became the vegetable of choice.īut the name jack has been a general term for a boy since the 1500s and for this reason, it found its way into many childhood songs and rhymes. Jack’s lanterns were carved out of potatoes, turnips, and the vegetables, in Scotland and Ireland, while beets were used in England. Stingy Jack thought he had tricked the devil, but the devil had the last laugh, condemning Jack to an eternity of wandering the planet with only an ember of hellfire for light. Irish legend has it that this use of jack-o’-lantern was named after a fellow named Stingy Jack. In the mid-1800s, young boys used hollowed-out and lit-up root vegetables to spook people. Which leads us to ask the question: who, or what, is the namesake of this autumn tradition? Who are jack-o’-lanterns named for?īoth the tradition of carving a pumpkin and the name jack-o’-lantern are rooted in Irish lore and date back hundreds of years. These pumpkins have their own emoji too, the Jack-O’-Lantern emoji 🎃. These creations are called jack-o’-lanterns, and they are proudly displayed on porches and stoops across the country. In fact, pumpkins are so popular near Halloween, that October 26 is National Pumpkin Day.īut Halloween pumpkins aren’t just any pumpkins. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.Every October, thousands of Americans scoop out the flesh of a gourd, carefully carve a haunting face into its rind, and stick a candle inside. Several cultures mixed together in celebration of Halloween, creating the iconic pumpkin faces we still know today.Īndrew Huntley is a Gallery Experience Presenter in CMNH’s Lifelong Learning Department. Pumpkins themselves were introduced by the Indigenous Peoples to Europeans as early as the 1600’s, when tales of Jack first began to be told. (There are also several French recipes for a pumpkin soup that suggest carving pumpkins for decoration as early as the 1760’s). They arrived in America to celebrate Halloween and were able to find a very particular new world crop that was much larger and easier to carve than their root vegetables of home the winter squash, the most famous of which is a pumpkin. As with most immigrants also had a role in traditional jack-o-lanterns. The waves of immigrants created by the Great Potato Famine of the 1840’s. Occasionally these would be carved with faces, a tradition that continues to this day in Britain and Ireland. As it was naturally dark in pre-industrial revolution Ireland, many would carve turnips, potatoes or other root vegetables and add coals or candles to create makeshift lanterns to help guide those celebrating. Many people in those areas also continued the Gaelic celebration of Samhain, with its rituals of going from house to house in search of food and drink (these are the origins Trick or Treating). These two legends began to intertwine-when many people in the moors of the British Isles saw the naturally occurring marsh gas, they attributed to Stingy Jack. False fire is an actual occurrence- scientifically, ignis fatuss, is known as marsh gas and occurs during the spontaneous ignition of methane created by decaying plant matter in marshes or swampy areas. There is also other folklore from this time surrounding what’s known as ignis fatuus, or false fire. Stingy Jack was sentenced to roam the Earth for all eternity with nothing but an ember given to him by the Devil to light his way. Some longer versions of the story have the Devil being tricked 3 or 4 different times.Įventually though, time caught up with Jack and he was unable to trick the Devil again.
Jack then offered the Devil out of the deal in exchange for not taking his soul for a long time. The most popular version of the tale involves Jack first tricking the Devil into changing his form, then trapping him in his transfigured state.
In the early 1600’s, the legend of a shadowy figure began to arise known as Stingy Jack (Jack the Smith, Drunk Jack, Flakey Jack, and other names are also in the folklore and can be used interchangeably). To know the origins of jack-o-lanterns, we have to go all the way back across the Atlantic to the fens, or marshes, of rural Ireland. You may be wonder how jack-o-lanterns became so popular, or why we carve them out of pumpkins. Suddenly you find yourself hyper aware of every sound around you, and you start as you realize you see a pair of eyes glowing at you…until you realize it’s a jack-o-lantern. The wind blows through the branches, bringing a chill that isn’t necessarily due to the temperature.
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