Walk down almost any street at the end of October and you’ll see the familiar face of Halloween: a round orange pumpkin, hollowed out and carved with a crooked smile.
It may look as though the pumpkin was created specifically for the job. It’s large, brightly coloured and conveniently empty in the middle once the seeds and flesh have been scooped out.
But the pumpkin is a relatively recent arrival in our Halloween story. Before it took over windowsills, supermarket displays and front porches, the traditional lantern was much more likely to be carved from a turnip.
And unlike many modern pumpkin lanterns, the turnip was rarely designed to look friendly.
Halloween’s original carved face
The practice of hollowing out turnips, cutting faces into them and placing a light inside was once widespread across Ireland and Northern Ireland. The resulting lanterns were carried or placed near homes during Halloween, sometimes as part of games and pranks and sometimes to create a spooky atmosphere.
Records collected from Irish schoolchildren during the 1930s give us a glimpse of how the custom worked.
One account in the National Folklore Collection describes people scooping out a turnip until only its thick outer skin remained. Eyes, a nose and a mouth were cut into one side, and a candle was placed inside before the lantern was set on a wall or gate.
There was no requirement for even teeth, perfectly shaped eyes or a cheerful expression.
Even a fairly basic carving could look deeply displeased with anyone who happened to pass it after dark.
The natural texture and shape of a turnip did much of the frightening work by itself.
Meet the “ghost turnip”
One of the best-known surviving examples of the tradition can be found in the National Museum of Ireland’s Irish Folklife Collection.
Known as the ghost turnip, it’s a plaster cast of a lantern associated with Fintown in County Donegal. A local schoolteacher gave the original turnip lantern to the museum in 1943 and said it represented the type commonly made in the area around 1900.
Its face is far removed from the neat triangular features often carved into pumpkins today. The mouth is narrow, the eyes are uneven and the entire lantern has the appearance of something that has just remembered an awful grievance.
These were not necessarily decorative objects in the modern sense. They belonged to a Halloween tradition that made room for darkness, mischief, stories and the possibility that something strange might be waiting when the sun goes down.
One turnip lantern sitting alone on a wall looks as though it knows something.
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Where does Jack come into it?
The carved lantern is often connected to the Irish folktale of Stingy Jack, although - as with many traditions passed down through generations - the story has several versions.
In this 18 th century telling, Stingy Jack was a notorious Dublin drunkard said to be even more wicked than the devil. Angered by the comparison, the devil came to claim Jack’s soul, but Jack tricked him into climbing an apple tree and trapped him there with a ring of crucifixes.
Jack agreed to set him free only if the devil promised never to take his soul to hell. When Jack later died, he was refused entry to heaven because of his sinful life, while the devil kept his promise and turned him away from hell.
Taking pity on him, the devil gave Jack a burning coal to light his way. Jack placed it inside a hollowed-out turnip and was condemned to wander forever between heaven and hell. He became known as Jack O’Lantern, or “Seán na Gealaí”.
People are then said to have made their own versions of Jack’s lantern, carving frightening faces into root vegetables to deter Jack or other wandering spirits.
How the custom crossed the Atlantic
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Irish emigrants carried Halloween customs and stories with them to North America. There, the turnip faced some unexpectedly strong competition.
Pumpkins were widely available, much larger and considerably easier to hollow out and carve. They also offered a broad, relatively smooth surface on which people could create more elaborate faces and designs.
Anyone who has attempted to carve a turnip will understand the attraction.
Over time, the orange pumpkin lantern became closely associated with Halloween in the United States. Its popularity then travelled internationally through films, television, advertising and an increasingly globalised version of the festival.
Eventually, the adapted custom found its way back across the Atlantic.
