Every Halloween, you get a big, round, orange pumpkin, cut around the top, scoop out the innards, and carve a face. Voila! You have transformed a pumpkin into a jack-o’-lantern. But why Jack? Why not a “Sally-o’-lantern” or “Fred-o’-lantern”? Who is Jack?
The roots of the carving tradition go back to the mid-19th century, when about 2 million people emigrated from Ireland to the United States as a result of the Great Famine of 1845 to 1852. The Irish people made significant contributions to American culture in politics, organized labor, religion, literature, music, art, and folklore, including Halloween traditions.
An old Irish folktale tells the story of Stingy Jack, a miserable drunkard who played tricks on family, friends, and even the devil. One day, he tricked the devil into climbing a tree, then placed crosses around the tree trunk so the devil couldn’t get down. After Jack made the devil promise not to take his soul when he died, he removed the crosses.
When Jack died, St. Peter denied him entrance to heaven, but the devil kept his promise and didn’t take his soul. Jack was destined to wander forever in the darkness between heaven and hell, but he asked the devil how he could live with no light. The devil tossed him a live coal from the flames of hell to help him light his way. Jack placed it in a hollowed-out turnip, and ever since that day, Jack has roamed the earth without a resting place, with only the makeshift lamp to light his way.
Many folklore tales are based on the need to explain some natural phenomenon or give a warning for safety, and Jack’s tale explained the luminous natural shimmerings found hovering over swampy ground at night, caused by spontaneous combustion of gases formed by rotting organic matter. The glowing fog was considered to be a sighting of Jack as he roamed the darkness with his turnip lamp.
Before the time of the Great Migration, many people in Ireland still celebrated Samhain, the pagan festival that Halloween is connected to. It was tradition to carve faces in turnips and potatoes and place the lanterns in the window to scare away Jack and any other evil spirits wandering by. In America, Irish immigrants substituted fat pumpkins (of the genus Cucurbita) for smaller vegetables, and so was born the carved-out snaggle-toothed jack-o’-lantern common in Halloween festivities today.
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