Every year on Halloween, you see a snarling face or a creeping ghost carved onto a pumpkin on almost every porch. Carving pumpkins has become an American tradition, just like baking cookies on Christmas and dying eggs on Easter. The question is why Americans do this. What is the origin of cutting up a pumpkin and creating elaborate designs? Well, it starts with the story of “Stingy Jack.”
According to the myth, Stingy Jack decided to invite the devil over for some drinks, but Jack refused to pay the bartender for his drink. In order to solve all of his problems, Jack asked the devil to turn himself (yes, the devil himself) into a coin. Jack was supposed to use the coin to pay for his drink, but he decided to pocket it. Jack dropped the coin, which contained the devil, into his pocket right next to his silver cross. This cross prevented the devil from returning to his more natural form. Jack eventually freed the devil, but under a few conditions; the devil was to not bother Jack for the next year, and when Jack died, the devil could not claim his soul. Jack did not stop there. Jack then tricked the devil a year later by coaxing the devil into a tree and then craving a cross onto the bark. In order to be free this time, the devil had to promise Jack ten years of freedom.
As life goes, Jack did eventually die. Upon his death, God did not want such a trickster in heaven, so God locked him outside the gate. To make matters worse, Jack had made the devil promise him to never claim his soul, so the devil refused to let him cross over into Hell. Not having anywhere to go, Jack was sent on his way with nothing but the burning coal he used to light his way. Jack then decided to put the coal into a carved out turnip, and he has been haunting the world ever since.
Jack was then on known as “Jack of the Lantern,” or as we know it, Jack O’Lantern in Ireland. The Irish would then carve scary images into turnips of potatoes in hopes of keeping Jack away from their homes. When the Irish immigrated to America, they brought with them carved potatoes, turnips, and soon to be, pumpkins and this is how the tradition of carving pumpkins came to be a hallmark of Halloween.