Rummaging elbow deep in the pulpy bowels of a pumpkin, and then carving out a ghastly visage is one of Halloween’s most relished, and tactile treats. The Jack ‘O’ Lantern is, after all, nearly synonymous – in North America – with Halloween itself: from Washington Irvine’s Headless Horseman, to innocent cardboard renderings placed proudly in front windows, the mischievous face of the pumpkin is often the first symbol that comes to mind.
But this corpulent fruit hasn’t always had all the gory glory. In fact, its reign as the Jack ‘O’ Lantern has been relatively short. There was a time when that most unsuspecting, and neglected family of edibles, the tubers, had the honour of being host to this hallowed title. And its high time that the turnip got its due as the original, albeit little, Jack ‘O’ Lantern.
The turnip’s rise and fall began in Ireland with a Christian folktale about a man named Jack. A quick-witted drunkard, the tale tells of his numerous encounters with Satan. Each time he and the devil would meet, Jack would challenge him to a duel. There are numerous versions of these encounters, and all show signs of appropriation for various ends, but the common theme is that of trickery. In some versions, Jack dares Satan up an apple tree, and then carves a cross in the trunk to keep him at bay; in another, he dares the devil to change himself into a shilling, and then quickly scratches a cross on it, thus infuriating Lucifer. (In many ways, his self serving, hypocritical invocation of the cross resembles the actions of many Christian’s today, but enough about that, back to Jack, and the turnip thing)
Each year the devil returns on Halloween to take Jack’s soul, and each year Jack extends his life by one more year by cheating the devil. But the time comes for Jack to die, and when he does, he is refused at the pearly gates. Poor Jack wanders down to Hell’s ninth, tired and depressed, only to find that Satan recognizes him, and bars him from the fiery pit. And just as Jack is turning away, as he dotes lugubriously on his purgatorial state, the devil hurls at him a glowing ember (presumably from the fiery pit).
While wandering through purgatory – you can’t really do much else – he stumbles on a turnip. He bites voraciously into it, and finds that it’s rotten. But the burning ember, which is now soundly burning his hand, fits perfectly into the depression, and he finds it makes a rather handsome lantern. And so Jack, with turnip-lantern in hand, wandered for eternity.
Why then, do we use pumpkins today for the aforementioned Jack ‘O’ Lantern? When the wave of Irish emmigrants came to the New World during the Great Potato Famine, they found that turnips here were far less abundant. And pumpkins quickly took their place. The End.
