Pumpkin carving as become a kind of modern art. People take it seriously. This year people are even carving images of presidential candidates in their pumpkins to make political statements. A girl I went to high school with carved Barak Obama into her pumpkin. Others stick to the traditional scary faces with triangular eyes and leering toothy grins.
Some places like Keene, NH for instance even have pumpkin festivals. Carving Jack O'Lanterns has become an integral part of American Culture.
The annual festival in Keene draws tourists from all over the world. The locals take their festival seriously, carving hundreds of pumpkins up to create a glowing spectacle not seen elsewhere.
Aren't those Jack O'Lanterns fabulous?
But where did this tradition come from? Why do we carve pumpkins into leering monsters on Halloween? Do other people do it?
Turns out the tradition of carving gourds into sneering leering monstrous faces comes from medieval Scotland and Ireland. The Irish have a folk tale called "Stingy Jack" and most historians believe this particular tradition arose in response to this little story.
Stingy Jack, as it turns out, was a very stingy man. He didn't like to spend his money. One night he invited the devil to have a drink with him at a local tavern. So they drink their ale and wracked up a hefty tab, and Stingy Jack being stingy as he was did not want to pay the barkeep. So he tricked the devil into turning himself into a coin to pay for their ale. And the devil did. And Stingy Jack stole the coin back and placed it in his pocket next to silver cross so that the devil couldn't change himself back. Jack eventually decided to free the devil, but only under the condition that the devil would not bother Jack again for at least one whole year and that if Jack died the devil would not claim his soul. The devil agreed and left good old Stingy Jack alone. A year later the two came into contact once more. This time Stingy Jack tricked the devil into climbing up a tree to pick some fruit. While the devil was high up in the tree Jack decided it would be funny to carve a cross into the trunk, neatly trapping the devil up in that fruit tree. Again Jack bargained with the devil and the devil agreed to the same terms as before: to leave Jack alone for a year and not to claim his soul if he died. So Jack helped the devil get down from the tree. Then one day Jack died. God didn't want such a conniving and dishonest soul in heaven so he refused to take him. The devil, bound by his original pledge, refused to claim Jack too. And so the devil sent Jack off into the inky blackness of the night with naught but a burning coal to light his way. Jack, being the smart man he was, put the coal into a carved out turnip. And so Jack roams the earth with his glowing turnip because neither God nor the Devil wants him.
The Irish began calling Jack "Jack of the Lantern" or "Jack O'Lantern". The Irish and Scottish started to carve frightening faces into turnips and potatoes, which they stuck a candle in, to ward off Jack and other wandering souls like him. These "Jack O'Lanterns" were placed near doors and windows to keep evil spirits out of Scotch-Irish homes. When the Scottish and Irish migrated to the other places, like the United States where native pumpkins replaced turnips, they brought their folk tale and the tradition of carving Jack O'Lanterns with them. The story of "Stingy Jack" has since faded, but leering faces of Jack O'Lanterns glow brightly on doorsteps across the United States every October.
