@lindalemoigne: Your Halloween pumpkin started out as something far creepier. Long before pumpkins, people in Ireland and other Celtic nations carved jack-o'-lanterns out of turnips, along with potatoes and beets. Metal lanterns were expensive, so families hollowed out root vegetables, carved grim faces and set candles inside, as Smithsonian Magazine reports. The tradition is tied to Samhain, the ancient Celtic festival on October 31 when the veil between the living and the dead was thought to be thinnest. The glowing faces lit the way and warded off harm, and they're tied to the legend of Stingy Jack, a man who tricked the devil and was doomed to wander the earth forever. Ireland's National Museum of Country Life keeps a plaster cast of a "ghost turnip" from Donegal with a pinched, angry face, donated in 1943 because the original was falling apart. Irish immigrants carried the custom to America, where the bigger, softer pumpkin took over. One look at the old turnips shows why: they are far scarier. source: Smithsonian Magazine. (n.d.). When people carved turnips instead of pumpkins for Halloween. Smithsonian Magazine.

Linda LeMoigne

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Thursday 29 October 2026 14:24:58 GMT