Put a candle inside a carved pumpkin and almost anyone will recognise Halloween. Yet travel backwards through the history of the jack-o'-lantern and the cheerful orange pumpkin eventually disappears.
In its place are carved root vegetables, mysterious lights seen in dark countryside and stories about wandering figures condemned to travel through the night.
Even the name jack-o'-lantern existed before the Halloween pumpkin as we know it today.
What Is a Jack-o'-Lantern?
Today, a jack-o'-lantern usually means a pumpkin that has been hollowed out, carved with a face or design and illuminated from within.
Traditionally the light came from a candle. Modern versions often use battery-powered lights instead.
The effect is wonderfully simple. In daylight, it is a carved vegetable. In darkness, the light transforms the holes into glowing eyes and a fiery mouth.
But pumpkins were not always involved.
Before Pumpkins Came Turnips
Carved vegetable lanterns were made in Britain and Ireland using root vegetables such as turnips and swedes.
The inside could be hollowed out, a face carved through the outer surface and a candle or other light placed inside.
Compared with a large pumpkin, carving a hard turnip was considerably more difficult.
It also produced something rather different.
The small size, pale flesh and irregular shape of a carved turnip can make the finished lantern resemble a shrivelled human head. Surviving historical examples are often far more unsettling than the smiling pumpkin decorations familiar today.
Halloween lanterns in Britain and Ireland could be carved from turnips and other root vegetables. Pumpkins became dominant later, particularly as Halloween traditions developed in North America.
Why Carve Faces?
The exact meaning of carved lanterns has varied between places, periods and storytellers.
They have been described as frightening decorations, representations of spirits, objects carried during seasonal celebrations and lanterns used to startle people travelling after dark.
Modern explanations sometimes claim that every carved lantern was specifically intended to frighten away evil spirits. That makes a wonderfully neat origin story, but folk customs are rarely so simple.
Traditions change as people repeat them, and different communities can give the same object different meanings.
The Name Is Older Than the Pumpkin
The expression jack-o'-lantern was used before it became firmly associated with carved Halloween pumpkins.
“Jack” was historically a common name that could be used to refer to an ordinary or unidentified man. A “Jack of the lantern” could therefore suggest a man carrying a lantern.
The name also became associated with mysterious lights reportedly seen over marshes, bogs and other dark landscapes.
These strange lights were known by several names, including will-o'-the-wisp.
Before their natural explanations were understood, such lights inspired stories of spirits and supernatural beings leading travellers away from safe paths.
Jack-o'-lantern and will-o'-the-wisp have both been names associated with mysterious wandering lights. That gives the Halloween lantern an interesting connection with much older supernatural folklore.
Who Was Stingy Jack?
One of the best-known stories associated with the jack-o'-lantern today concerns a character usually called Stingy Jack.
There are different versions of the tale, and it should be treated as folklore rather than as a documented account of how the lantern was invented.
Stingy Jack
According to popular versions of the story, Jack was a cunning man who managed to trick the Devil.
Jack persuaded the Devil into a situation from which he could not escape and only released him after extracting a promise that the Devil would not claim his soul.
Eventually Jack died.
Heaven would not receive him, but because of the bargain, the Devil would not take him either.
Jack was therefore condemned to wander through the darkness.
The Devil supposedly gave him a burning coal to provide light. Jack placed the coal inside a hollowed vegetable and continued his endless journey.
The wandering figure became known as Jack of the Lantern — or Jack-o'-lantern.
It is a perfect Halloween story: darkness, deception, the Devil and a lonely light wandering through the night.
But folklore develops through retelling. The Stingy Jack story is better understood as one strand of jack-o'-lantern tradition rather than proof that one particular person or tale created the custom.
Then Came the Pumpkin
European immigrants carried Halloween customs and traditions with them to North America.
There they encountered something almost perfectly designed for making lanterns:
The pumpkin.
Pumpkins were larger than turnips, comparatively easy to hollow and offered a broad surface for carving elaborate faces and designs.
The transformation made sense. Instead of struggling to excavate a stubborn root vegetable, people could cut open a pumpkin, scoop out the soft interior and carve directly through its wall.
The orange colour also happened to fit Halloween's autumn setting perfectly.
How the Pumpkin Took Over Halloween
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the carved pumpkin became increasingly associated with Halloween in North America.
Illustrations, postcards, decorations, films and later television helped turn its glowing face into an instantly recognisable symbol.
As American Halloween imagery spread internationally, the pumpkin travelled with it.
Eventually it became so closely associated with Halloween that it is easy to assume pumpkins had always been part of the celebration.
They had not.
Why Do We Put Them Outside?
Today jack-o'-lanterns are commonly placed on windowsills, porches, doorsteps and garden walls.
They create atmosphere, decorate the entrance and — in places where trick-or-treating is common — a lit pumpkin can informally signal that a household is participating in Halloween.
That gives the lantern a surprisingly practical modern purpose.
A symbol once associated with mysterious lights and frightening faces can now effectively mean:
“Yes, you can knock here.”
From Simple Faces to Pumpkin Art
The traditional jack-o'-lantern face requires little more than triangular eyes and a jagged mouth.
Modern pumpkin carving can be dramatically more ambitious.
Carvers create haunted houses, animals, witches, landscapes, portraits and intricate patterns by cutting completely through the pumpkin or shaving different depths from its surface.
Some designs take hours.
Others preserve the older spirit perfectly: two eyes, a strange grin, a light inside and darkness all around.
A Light That Refused to Disappear
The jack-o'-lantern has changed almost beyond recognition.
A mysterious light in the countryside became part of folklore. Root vegetables were hollowed into eerie lanterns. Stories grew around wandering figures such as Stingy Jack. In North America, the pumpkin proved to be the perfect carving material.
Yet one thing remained constant:
A small light shining out of the darkness.
Perhaps that is why the jack-o'-lantern has endured. Even surrounded by elaborate costumes, decorations and modern Halloween attractions, a glowing face on a dark doorstep still does the job remarkably well.
If carving a pumpkin feels too easy, the traditional challenge remains available: try hollowing out a turnip. Just don't blame GhostlyTV when you're still attacking it with a spoon forty minutes later.