The date today is October 29th, which means my favorite holiday is just around the corner. Sadly, my evil university overlords are not allowing me to celebrate it this year, as they do not understand the true importance of Halloween. Rather, they believe that torturous amounts of homework and jumping through endless academic hoops like a trick pony are much more important to my future. So, unable to don my costume of unparalleled amazingness I had planned for this year’s festivities, I am banished to my room (dungeon), staring at a computer screen and clinging desperately to my dwindling inspiration. Here’s where I stop complaining and get to the point.
How I am feeling tonight
I know you have already read about Halloween here. You must realize by now that it is the best holiday celebrated in the world and worth blogging about repeatedly. And tonight I want to talk about ye ole jack-o’-lantern and why we are so obsessed with crafting these meticulous creations out of something as impermanent as a gourd. Do not get me wrong, I love to decorate squirrel food as much as the next guy; leaving rotting fruit on my front porch to disappear slowly through a series of tiny teeth marks is a really worthwhile task.
Just look at this jerk.
Honestly, before I started writing this blog, I never really considered how utterly strange this custom is. It is so ritualistic – cheap plastic orange-handled utensils, newspaper spread across the kitchen table, a strainer for seeds. It’s like a murder scene from Dexter. The pumpkin killer slices open the skull, scoops out the stringy brains, carves out some macabre image on its skin and sets the thing aglow as a warning to all future pumpkin victims. There is something already ghoulish in the act of creating these things. So, besides getting us in the spirit to celebrate Halloween (i.e. to go buy unhealthy amounts of candy), why do we do this thing?
Obviously a professional. Note the star-shaped incision.
Anticlimactically, it is rather unclear how this all started but there are some creative theories. According to one interesting source I perused, these creations originated in Irish mythology with a man named Stingy Jack. Well, Stingy Jack got in over his head with the devil (easy to do; trust me I know) and ended up in purgatory with only a carved out turnip lantern to light his way, thus deeming him Jack of the Lantern, later shortened to Jack-o’-lantern. I’m not convinced, but I enjoy the story. The same source told me that people in Ireland and Scotland began the tradition with carving scary faces into turnips and potatoes to scare away ole Jack. I’m guessing the Irish were too drunk to realize that turnips are too small to be scary and that two squirrels could easily carry off a potato. It’s okay, I’m Irish enough to stereotype them.
We are a disgraceful lot.
A slightly more convincing text told me that the whole tradition started with the Celtic version of Halloween, Samhain (good luck pronouncing that one, mwahaha), and started with large bonfires aimed to ward off evil spirits. When this tradition moved across Ireland and the drunks kept burning down the village, they placed the fires instead into turnips and gourds (more fire-safe containers, if you will). So, much like many diseases, Halloween came to America on a boat from Europe. When the Irish realized we were short on turnips and other preferred spirit-dispelling gourds, they found pumpkins (and everyone knows pumpkins are way creepier than turnips). So the Irish shouted, “Jack pot-o’-gold!” (or some other Irishey exclamation) and pumpkins became our norm.
Whatever the explanation, I advise you, go find your Halloween spirit, carve a pumpkin for me and thank an Irishman. Happy Halloween! Mwahahahahaha!
Cultural Curiosities 