Origins of the Jack O' Lantern

Last night I felt a long-forgotten tactile memory. A spoon's edge scraped against the solid roughness of the inner-wall of the soon-to-be spooky head and it sent a familiar vibration through the bones of my arm. Oh yeah. I remember now, pumpkin carving.

Lesa, Debbie, and I were sprawled on the kitchen floor digging and slashing into our individually shaped pumpkins, while listening to The Tube on Comcast Cable (channel 298, friends, all music videos all the time). It seemed sort of therapeutic, like gardening or doodling or knitting. We carved and talked, sharing the conversation with our friend and web presence provider, Dan.

The smell of the sinewy (Lesa's word for it) innards of the orange skulls was filling the kitchen and soon it was mixed with the scent of roasting pumpkin seeds. Those really smelled like brownies. Rock on.

The three jack o' lanterns came out well. Two smilers. One frowner.

I swear I must have heard the history of the Jack O' Lantern a thousand times but when rereading it, it just didn't seem familiar to me at all. Here you go:

People have been making jack-o-lanterns at Halloween for centuries. The practice originated from an Irish myth about a man nicknamed "Stingy Jack." According to the story, Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him. True to his name, Stingy Jack didn't want to pay for his drink, so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks. Once the Devil did so, Jack decided to keep the money and put it into his pocket next to a silver cross, which prevented the Devil from changing back into his original form. Jack eventually freed the Devil, under the condition that he would not bother Jack for one year and that, should Jack die, he would not claim his soul. The next year, Jack again tricked the Devil into climbing into a tree to pick a piece of fruit. While he was up in the tree, Jack carved a sign of the cross into the tree's bark so that the Devil could not come down until the Devil promised Jack not to bother him for ten more years.

Soon after, Jack died. As the legend goes, God would not allow such an unsavory figure into heaven. The Devil, upset by the trick Jack had played on him and keeping his word not to claim his soul, would not allow Jack into hell. He sent Jack off into the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved out turnip and has been roaming the Earth with it ever since. The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as "Jack of the Lantern," and then, simply "Jack O'Lantern."

In Ireland and Scotland, people began to make their own versions of Jack’s lanterns by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them into windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits. In England, large beets are used. Immigrants from these countries brought the jack o’lantern tradition with them when they came to the United States. They soon found that pumpkins, a fruit native to America, make perfect jack o’lanterns.

source: history.com