Giants, fairies, banshees and magical fish: Ireland is the birthplace of many a mystical creature, and two (and a half) of my grandparents, so I feel a personal connection to each of the tales. But what many don't know is that the Halloween tradition now so woven into our celebrations, you can hardly walk into a Supermarket without seeing one, also came straight from the Emerald Isle. It starts with a man called Jack.
Now, Jack is a very mean man, mean enough to earn the nickname Stingy Jack. In fact, Jack was so awful that, the story goes, the Devil himself wanted to meet him and bring him down into the depths of hell. Perhaps hoping for a partner in crime.
Deceitful Jack, however, upon meeting the Devil, asked for one final wish before he departed: a drink at the pub. And one final trick: for the Devil to briefly turn himself into a silver coin to pay the tab. Alas, as soon as the shift to silver was done, Stingy Jack pocketed the now coin-shaped Devil alongside a crucifix, trapping him in there until a deal was struck to leave Jack alone for the next ten years.
Once the time was up, the Devil appeared again, and Jack made another final request: an apple, from the nearby tree. When the devil climbed up to retrieve it, Jack carved crosses into the trunk, trapping him in the tree until another deal was struck: the Devil would never take Jack's soul.
When old age took hold, and Jack was finally ready to leave this Earth, his bad deeds didn't win him a spot in heaven, and his deal with the Devil halted him from hell. And so his soul was left to wander the Earth with only an ember, gifted from the Devil, to light his way. An ember he held inside a carved-out turnip, earning him the new name Jack of the Lantern. Today's term: Jack o'Lantern.
But why do we put pumpkins outside our homes, you ask? Before what we now call Halloween, there was Samhain, an old Gaelic festival marking the end of harvest and the start of winter on October 31st. On Samhain, it was said that the boundary between the physical and spiritual worlds grew thin. And so, to keep Jack of the Lantern and other spirits outside, faces were carved into turnips and potatoes as protection at the front door.
When the Irish immigrated to American, where pumpkins were a more popular choice, the tradition continued with the large orange vegetables we still have today. And now you know the tale behind why you've put one on your porch.