It occurred to me the other day that I had no idea where the tradition of carving out pumpkins came from. I had a vague notion that it probably had come over from Europe with our ancestors as so many of our holiday traditions had. I did a little research and found out that this one comes to us from Ireland. According to legend, Jack, the town drunk, tried to outsmart the Devil but got his comeuppance when he died. He couldn't get into Heaven and the Devil wouldn't let him into Hell either. Instead the Devil imprisoned Jack to an even darker fate. He sent Jack into the dark night to roam the world for eternity with only a coal to light his way. Jack lit the coal and put it in a hollowed-out turnip and has been drifting through the world with it scaring children ever since. The townsfolk began to refer to this figure as "Jack of the lantern" and soon people began carving their own lanterns out of turnips, beets, and potatoes, lighting them to ward off his evil spirit. When the Irish settlers discovered pumpkins upon arriving in the New World, they adapted the tradition, finding these new, larger veggies to be ideal for carving.
What interested me the most about this story is that with many holiday traditions like Christmas trees and the Yule Log, the focal point is always something from nature. When you think about it, that's all that our ancestors had at the time to mark the event or occasion. As always, Mother Nature provided and still does to this day. Sure, it's festive to see the stores all decorated, as well as people's homes, but the plastic and paper versions just don't do it for me. I, along with the majority of folks, still need the real thing, like pumpkins, Indian corn, gourds, and corn stalks. We still need to feel that connection to the earth and nature that runs through all of our most cherished traditions and, I suspect, in our very "blood memories," as Sidney Poitier once called it. All I know is that when I hold a pumpkin or a gourd in my hand, and play with the silky stalks atop the Indian Corn, I am back with my ancestors harvesting the land and, just to be safe, lighting that light. May it continue always!
And so it is.
