Origins of Halloween Part Seven: Pumpkins and Jack O' Lanterns

PUMPKINS

Pumpkins are of course another agricultural product always associated with Halloween.  Like apples, they are plentiful in October.  Also like apples, they were sometimes used for divination.  Some ladies put pumpkins on their heads at midnight on Halloween, to see their future husbands!  Having seen the inside of a pumpkin, I don't think this is worth it!

JACK O' LANTERNS & HALLOWEEN PRANKS
There is an Irish story explaining the origin of jack-o-lanterns:  It seems a man named Jack was barred from heaven because he was so stingy and forbidden to enter hell because of his practical jokes on the devil. The devil, angered by Jack's practical jokes, threw a live coal at him.  It landed in a half-eaten turnip in Jack's hand, creating the first jack-o-lantern.  (Early jack-o-lanterns were turnips as well as pumpkins and other gourds.)  Jack is condemned to walk the earth with his lantern until Judgment Day! Closed out of hell as well as heaven, he is suspended between life and death, and thus his jack-o-lantern is particularly appropriate to Halloween, the night when we're "Between the Worlds."
 

As a child in the southern U.S. I was told (teasingly) that the grinning pumpkin face in the window helped frighten evil spirits away from the house.  Although this may keep away the spirits of the dead, it seems to have little effect on the pranksters -- young people who become demons for a night and roam the neighborhoods making mischief.  Halloween provides an irresistible opportunity for the practical joker.  If the farmer's outhouse ends up in the creek, or your trees end up full of toilet paper, it was the evil spirits who did it --  a perfect alibi for the real culprits. 

Again, the limits placed on day-to-day behavior were weakened for a night -- sort of a social stress-relief valve.  Some once-common Halloween pranks, such as window-tapping, gathering vegetables (now eggs) to bombard house fronts and drop down chimneys, and removing carts and other belongings to faraway fields, were practiced in altered form in the United States when I was growing up (with the variation, of course, that we took things from the garage and left them in other neighbors' yards).  Soaping windows (especially car windows), stealing jack-o-lanterns, and "rolling" yards (adorning the trees and shrubs in toilet paper) are still popular.  Today, most of it is of course harmless, although I do wish people wouldn't smash jack-o-lanterns!

Were you ever a Halloween prankster?

To be continued..... more to come about Halloween and Halloween customs and traditions:
Black Cats, Witches, Bats & Owls!

The vintage Halloween images in this article are courtesy Lunagirl Images!