Before Halloween acquired its familiar orange grin, some of its lanterns had a much less glamorous identity: the turnip.
Behind the change lies a transatlantic story of practical carving, frightening faces and a man who supposedly outwitted the Devil a little too successfully.
THE SHORT ANSWER
We carve pumpkins as part of a Halloween lantern tradition with roots in Ireland and Britain, where people hollowed out turnips and other root vegetables and gave them alarming faces.
Pumpkins became the North American favourite because they were available and easier to carve. The custom is associated with the legend of Stingy Jack, but that story does not establish when carving began.
WHAT WE KNOW
One particularly useful piece of evidence sits in the National Museum of Ireland. In 1943, a teacher near Fintown in County Donegal supplied a turnip lantern, describing it as the kind made locally around 1900. The museum's display is a painted plaster cast.
The museum records that candles lit these lanterns and that they frightened people on 31 October. Here, at least, we have a documented custom rather than a guessed ancient origin.
Galway City Museum describes lanterns placed on walls and gates, hung from trees or left in graveyards to startle passers-by. A glowing face could provide an excellent fright without anybody believing it possessed supernatural powers.
HOW IT BECAME A HABIT
Irish migration helped carry Halloween customs and stories to North America. There, pumpkins offered a convenient material for lantern-making.
A pumpkin has a cavity that can be emptied; a turnip requires considerably more excavation. The larger surface also leaves room for a more elaborate face. The change makes practical sense before we even reach the ghosts.
American nineteenth-century writing shows that pumpkin lanterns were already familiar. Nathaniel Hawthorne used a carved pumpkin head in his 1852 story “Feathertop”. By 1892, an Atlanta Halloween party was reported as displaying pumpkins carved into smiling lanterns.
That history suggests a custom developing through migration, seasonal produce, mischief and celebration, rather than a single moment when everyone exchanged one vegetable for another.
THE STORY EVERYONE TELLS
In a familiar version of the legend, Stingy Jack tricks the Devil and secures a promise that his soul will not be taken to Hell.
When Jack dies, Heaven refuses him. The Devil honours the bargain and refuses him too. Condemned to wander, Jack receives a glowing ember, puts it inside a hollowed turnip and carries his lonely light through the darkness.
It is a wonderfully uncomfortable ending: Jack wins his argument and loses somewhere to go.
Versions differ. Galway's telling makes him a blacksmith with enchanted objects. These variations are part of the folklore, rather than competing biographies of a real man.
WHAT THE EVIDENCE ACTUALLY SAYS
WELL SUPPORTED applies to the recorded lantern custom and the pumpkin's later prominence. Its exact beginnings remain uncertain.
The name also has a history beyond the legend. Merriam-Webster traces “jack-o'-lantern” to seventeenth-century Britain, where it described a lantern-carrying man or night watchman. It was also used for mysterious marsh lights.
The dictionary treats the route from those meanings to the carved pumpkin as uncertain. The existence of a story about Jack therefore cannot prove that he supplied the name or caused the custom.
Similarly, Halloween's connections with Samhain do not, by themselves, demonstrate that ancient Celts carved turnip faces. A later recorded practice needs its own evidence before we project it centuries backwards.
And frightening people is not automatically the same thing as protecting a house from spirits. Those explanations can coexist in tradition, but they should not be treated as interchangeable historical facts.
WHY IT STUCK
A carved lantern turns ordinary produce into a small piece of theatre. In daylight it is a face; after dark it seems to acquire a personality.
It also invites participation. Each household can make its own version, from a threatening grimace to a cheerfully ridiculous smile.
The pumpkin gave the custom a generous canvas. The turnip deserves its share of the credit—and perhaps an apology for being written out of the picture.
RELATED CURIOSITIES
Why Do We Dress Up in Costumes at Halloween?
Why Do Children Say “Trick or Treat”?
Why Are Black Cats Considered Unlucky?
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
National Museum of Ireland — “Ghost turnip”, collection F1943.350; the Donegal lantern and its recorded use.
Galway City Museum — Brendan McGowan, “Turnip Lantern Tradition”, 9 October 2025; lantern customs and a blacksmith version of Jack's legend.
https://galwaycitymuseum.ie/blog/turnip-lantern-tradition/
Merriam-Webster — “The History of 'Jack-O'-Lantern'”; the name's earlier meanings and uncertainty about its application to pumpkins.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/the-history-of-jack-o-lantern
Clemson University Cooperative Extension — Alex Ryan Thompson, “The Origins of the Jack O’Lantern”, 27 October 2023; a retelling of Stingy Jack.
https://hgic.clemson.edu/the-origins-of-the-jack-olantern/
National Geographic — Blane Bachelor, “The twisted transatlantic tale of American jack-o’-lanterns”, 27 October 2020; migration, American literary examples and nineteenth-century celebrations. Its suggestions of ancient carving should be distinguished from the later documentary evidence.