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Posts Tagged ‘jack o’lanterns’

Relatively soon, the end of October will be approaching and bringing with it the year’s spookiest holiday, complete with families dressed in child and adult Halloween costumes , walking from house to house, which are, in turn, decorated with fake spider webs and cardboard skeletons and pumpkins carved into Jack O’ Lanterns.

How and when did the custom of Jack O’ Lanterns come to exist? It began centuries ago in Ireland, with a myth about a man known as “Stingy Jack.”

The story tells how Stingy Jack invites the Devil to have a drink with him, but as his name implies, Jack doesn’t want to pay. Instead, he asks the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack might use to make the purchase. When the Devil agrees, Jack changes his mind and keeps the coin beside a silver cross, keeping the Devil from transforming back. Eventually, though, Jack frees the Devil with the condition that he not claim his soul when he dies. Throughout the years, Jack continues to trick the Devil and lives in an unsavory manner.

At the end of Jack’s life, he finds that God doesn’t want to let him into Heaven, and the Devil refuses to let him into Hell. Instead, the Devil sends Jack out into the night with a piece of burning coal.

People from Ireland and Scotland simulated Jack’s fate by carving frightening faces into turnips or potatoes, placing them in windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack . By the time this custom came to America, pumpkins became the favored fruit to ward off wandering spirits like Stingy Jack.