
History Of Our Halloween Traditions
It's that time of year when millions of us are out there looking for our own versions of the Great pumpkin for our Halloween Jack-O-Lantern. But why do we do this? Why do we carve strange faces and pumpkins lighting them from inside and placing them at our doorsteps at Halloween? Well, Agriculture Department historical expert Anne Effland says this may have started thanks to an old Irish story from about the mid 1700s.
“The story of Jack,” she noted. “He was a drinker, a miser, a liar, a good for nothing character. And in the old story, Jack is being pursued by the devil. In order to escape, he tricked the devil into climbing a tree, and then when he got the devil up in the tree, he cut a sign of the cross in the in the tree, meaning the devil couldn't come down. That made the devil a little bit mad at Jack, who did eventually let him down out of the tree. But when Jack passed away, he couldn't get into heaven and the devil threw him out of the other place, tossing him a hot glowing ember in the process.”
“And Jack had with him a turnip that he was eating,” Effland continued. “And he carved out the turnip, put the ember inside, and had a light that was protected from wind and rain and other things while he wanders the earth.”
Jack and his Lantern wandered the earth...thus Jack-O-Lantern. Effland says from that story the Irish developed the tradition of the Jackal Lantern. On October 31st, a night when it was believed that Jack and other recently deceased souls wandered the Earth looking for live bodies to inhabit, residents would carve out turnips and put candles in them to either help guide the souls along or frighten them away.
When the Irish brought this tradition of the candle in the turnip to the United State, there were not many turnips around, but we did have pumpkins that were even better for holding those candles.
And another big Halloween tradition, trick-or-treating, may come from another ancient Celtic tradition.
“Called Guising, as in a disguise guising, where the poor would dress up in masks and costumes and go door to door and they would perform in return for food and drink,” Effland noted. “Later in Ireland and England it became Mischief Night where folks played pranks on each other. The Irish brought that idea to this country in the early 1800s and by the 1920s, though, and says it was getting a little out of hand.”
“There was a lot of vandalism and crime and some violence,” Effland noted, “And there was an effort led to change the mischief night from having kids out running around causing trouble to having kids go door to door in costumes and getting treats in return. And the idea was promoted by the Boy Scouts and other youth organizations of the period.”
It started out being called Beggar's night, but by the 1930s it got the name it has today.
If you have a story idea for the PNW Ag Network, call (509) 547-1618, or e-mail glenn.vaagen@townsquaremedia.com
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