

when Irish people would carve terrifying faces into hollowed-out turnips. In the US, they are in EVERYTHING during this time of year. The tradition of the carved Halloween Jack OLantern goes back many years. Jack-o-lanterns probably originated in either Great Britain or Ireland. Origins A modern British jack-o-lantern made from a turnip. It has become one of the best known and most popular symbols of Halloween. Edible pumpkins are a different variety and dont grow very large. A design, usually either a cheerful or a monstrous face is carved on the front of the vegetable. The pumpkins that we carve are large and fleshy and dont produce enough pulp to do anything with. National Geographic suggests another possible source of the term. Jack o lantern pumpkins and good pie pumpkins arent really the same. Donegal (it now resides at the Irish Museum of. It dates from 1903 and was carved at Baile na Finne, Co. But I cant for the life of me remember what I used to call it. Pumpkins eh here's proper scary, a traditional Irish Jack-O-Lantern made from a turnip. The jack-o’-lanterns were said to keep Jack’s wandering spirit away. Thanks to the explosion of posts on Reddit in the last month I know that Americans call a a carved pumpkin a 'jack olantern'. It is said that when he died, God wouldn’t allow him into heaven, and the Devil wouldn’t let him into hell either, so he was cursed to roam the earth for eternity. This myth says that while he was alive, Stingy Jack tricked the Devil for his own gain. Because of the transition between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, the ancient Celts thought that the veil between death and life was at its narrowest, meaning that spirits were able to roam freely between the realms according to Smithsonian.Įven the name jack-o’-lanterns ties back to the Samhain festival, According to Britannica, the lanterns were carved to ward off the spirit of Stingy Jack, who is the center of an 18th-century Irish myth. Samhain, translated as summer’s end according to Smithsonian Magazine, was the festival of fire and went from sundown on October 31 through November 1. What happened at Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary
