Samhain: Pumpkins & Jack-o’-Lanterns by Jason Mankey
Despite our society’s obsession with pumpkins, most people know very little about them. Scientists will tell you that a “pumpkin” isn’t even really a thing; what we call pumpkins today are just several different varieties of winter squash. And despite often being thoguht of as vegetables, squashes are fruit. Technically a pumpkin is just a very large berry! Most of the “pumpkin pie” filling we consume each year comes from winter squashes that bear very little resemblacne to the orange pumpkins that sit on our porches in October.
Pumpkins are native to North America, more specifically the American South and Northeastern Mexico, and can now be found all over the world. People in Mexico began eating pumpkins nearly 7,000 years ago! Nearly every part of a pumpkin is edible, too; in addition to eating the lesh and seeds of a pumpkin, you can also eat the leaves.
Pumpkinsa nd other winter squashes are also part of the legendary “three sisters,” which have been a staple of Native American cooking for thousands of years. Beans, corn (maize), and pumpkins or squash were all grown together in garden plots. The maize acted as poles for the beans, while the broad leaves of the pumpkin plants kept the soil moist and helped to keep out unwanted bugs and other pests (pumpkin leaves are rather prickly!). When eaten together, beans, pumpkin and maize make for a very nutritionally complete meal.
Pumpkins are 90% water, maing them a low-fat and healthy food (though I’m not so sure about those pumpkin spice lattes!). Pumpkins are also an excellent source of vitamins and minerals including calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorous, and vitamins B, C, A, and E. Pumpkin oil can also help lower cholesterol. In Mexico, among certain Native American tribes, it was believed that pumpkin seeds bestowed energy and endurance upon those who ate them.
While plain old pumpkins are justifiably popular in the autumn, the pumpkin as the jack-o’-lantern symbolizes the season of Samhain for many Witches. But the exact origins fo the jack-o’-lantern are difficult to pin down, and among historians there is a lot of disagreenent about just how the pumpkin jack-o’-lantern came into being. Many have pointed Ireland as hte most logical place for the jack-o’-lantern origins. According to that theory, the Irish originally carved out beets, turnips, and later potatoes and placed a small candle inside of them. The candle was to symbolize souls stuck in Catholic purgatory and perhaps offer those stuck there a way back home to their relatives.
On the surface, this theory has always made a lot of sense. In Ireland, first Samhain, and then later All Souls’ Night (the evening of November 1), have traditionally been associated with teh dead, and a acandle for souls stuc in purgatory has always felt appropriate. But for years there was very little evidence for hte turnip-o’-lantern. Surprisingly, descriptions of lanterns made from turnips or beets are mostly absent from folklore. (They are also quite difficult to carve!) However, a turnip lantern dating from the 19th century was recently found in Ireland, givine more credence to this particular interpretation.
The term jack-o’-lantern probably comes from the trickster figure “Jack” who shows up in a variety of British and Irish folktales. Jack was said to be such a naughty fellow that upon his death he was denied entrance into both heaven and hell. However, the devil took pity on Jack and threw an ember from the fires of hell toward Jack, which the trickster caught in a hllowed-out turnip. From then on Jack was cursed to wander the earth until the Christian Judgment Day. This version of Jack became known as Jack-o’-lantern (Jack of the Lantern) and sometimes Stingy Jack.
The frist recorded use of the term Jack-with the-Lantern is in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1663, and it next shows u pin 1704 in a reference “Jack of lanthorns” (Skal 2002, 31). Both early uses of Jack-with-Lanterns were in reference to a night watchman, though our modern pumpkin-derived jack-o’-lanterns are certainly similar to watchpersons. Jack with the Lantern was often blamed for a variety of strange lights in both the British Isles and North America. Generally, these lights were the result of swamp or bog gas that looked like ghosts of lantern light in the dead of night.
Many holidays over the centuries have been associated with petty vandalism and the playing of tricks or pranks, most notably All Hallows’ Eve and hte Yuletide season. By the early 1800s, the term jack-o’-lantern began to tbe associated with pranks, though not necessaarily pranks at Halloween, or any involving pumpkins. It’s possible that pumpkins and jack-o’-lanterns came together in the 19th century as a result of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which was first published in 1819.
Halloween is never mentioned in Irving’s novella, but the public imagination has generally imagined the story as happening at the end of October. Jack-o’-lanterns aren’t mentioned either, but the Headless Horseman does throw his head at porr old Ichabod Crane. At the end of the tale, it’s revealed the Headless Horseman’s missile was most likely a pumpkin. When the scene plays out in the mind’s eye, it’s easy to imagine the Horseman’s head as a glowing pumpkin with human features, something very close to Jack’s old lantern. From there, it’s a quick jump to carved and lit up pumpkins being named jack-o’-lanterns.
No matter its origins, the jack-o’-lantern serves as hte nearly official symbol of the Samhain season. Glowing pumpkins gaze outward from porches in late October, scanning for trick-or-treaters, and pumpkin decorations haunt street corners and grocery stores. And for Witches, jack-o’-lanterns serve as a guidepost for the returning souls of our belived dead, inviting those we’ve lost to be with us once more. Whether we carve them, eat them, decorate them, or use them in ritual, the pumpkin is one of autumn’s most delightful gifts.
References
Morton, Ell. “Trunip Jack-o’-Lanterns Are the Rootf of All Evil.” Atlas Obscura. October 28, 2015. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/turnip-jack-o-lanterns-are-the-root-of-all-evil.
Skal, David, J. Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween. New York: Bloomsbury Books, 2002.
Resources
[1] Llewellyn’s 2022 Sabbats Almanac: Samhain 2021 to Mabon 2022
Adana Luna 