Often called “Stingy” Jack, he spends much of his life tricking the devil. The story, which has several different iterations, can be traced back to as long ago as 1551, Bannatyne says, and is quite sinister indeed. So, where did the name Jack come from? There are a few steps in this story, and the etymology of “jack-o’-lantern” is almost unrelated to its modern meaning and tradition.Īccording to one prominent theory, the “Jack” in question is the subject of an old folktale.

“Holidays were one way we had, as a culture, to put everybody on the same page,” Bannatyne explains. Meanwhile, as the curiosity surrounding death grew, so too did the number of immigrants coming to the United States, which gave an extra appeal to the notion of a new American holiday that everyone could celebrate together. “So many men went missing in the Civil War, so you didn’t know whether your loved one was alive or dead,” Bannatyne says. The end of the Civil War also brought an increased cultural interest in ghosts. This growing popularity of the “carved pumpkin trick” happened to coincide with the country’s rising interest in Halloween itself, Bannatyne says. Poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) described the practice in his poem “The Pumpkin”: “When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, / Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!” The so-called “carved pumpkin trick” became so popular that there were even how-to articles printed in magazines as early as 1842. After sticking a candle in the pumpkin to light it up, kids would run around, Bannatyne tells TIME, frightening people with the spooky-looking objects. Though 19th century immigrants very well could have brought their vegetable-carving traditions to the U.S., Bannatyne says it was actually something else that really popularized the carving of a pumpkin: its potential as a prank.īefore Halloween was widely celebrated in the United States, kids started taking pumpkins - which were overwhelmingly plentiful during the months of September and October - and carving faces into them. In Ireland and Scotland, for example, people would carve faces into turnips, and beets were used in other places as well. Starting in the 1800s, Bannatyne says, countries in Northern Europe developed their own customs of carving faces into vegetables in the fall season. The custom of carving a face into a pumpkin for Halloween is an American amalgamation of different European autumnal customs and an old piece of spooky folklore, explains Lesley Bannatyne, an author of five books on Halloween history, literature and culture.

Though jack-o’-lanterns are now an American cultural icon of Halloween, their symbolism is quite recent - and the story of how they came to be is a complicated one.

Scary jack o lantern pumpkin