On All Hallows’ eve, the ancient Celts would place a skeleton on their window sill to
represent the departed. Originating in Europe, these lanterns were first carved
from a turnip
or rutabaga.
Believing that the head was the most powerful part of the body, containing the spirit and the knowledge, the Celts used
the "head"
of the vegetable to frighten off the embodiment of superstitions. Welsh,
Irish and British myth are full of legends of the Brazen Head, which may be a folk memory of the widespread ancient Celtic practice of headhunting - the results of which were often nailed to a door lintel or brought to the fireside to speak their wisdom.
The name jack-o'-lantern can be traced back to the Irish legend of Stingy Jack, a greedy, gambling, hard-drinking old farmer. He tricked the devil into climbing a tree and trapped him by carving a cross into the tree trunk. In revenge, the devil placed a curse on Jack, condemning him to forever wander the earth at night with the only light he had: a candle inside of a hollowed turnip.
The carving of pumpkins is associated with Halloween in North America where pumpkins are both readily available and much larger- making them easier to carve than turnips. Many families that celebrate Halloween carve a pumpkin into a frightening or comical face and place it on their doorstep after dark.
The American tradition of carving pumpkins preceded the Great Famine period of Irish immigration and was originally associated with harvest time in general, not becoming specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 19th century.
Halloween has origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain [pronounced: sow- wen] (Irish pronunciation: ['s'aun']; from the Old Irish samhain, possibly derived from Gaulish samonios).
The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture, and is sometimes regarded as the "Celtic New Year". Traditionally, the festival was a time used by the ancient Celtic pagans to take stock of supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores.
The ancient Celts believed that on
October 31 the boundary between the world and the otherworld dissolved, and the dead become dangerous for the living by causing problems such as sickness or damage to crops. The festival frequently involved bonfires into which the bones of slaughtered livestock were thrown.
The wearing of costumes and masks at Halloween goes back to the Celtic traditions
of attempting to copy the evil spirits or to placate them. In Scotland the dead were impersonated by young men with masked, veiled or blackened faces, while dressed in white.
