Origin
Pumpkin carving is thought to come from Ireland, where turnips, mangelwurzel or beets were used. Turnip lanterns, sometimes with faces carved into them, were made on the Gaelic festival of Samhain (31 October–1 November) in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. Samhain was a time when fairies and spirits were said to be active. The purpose of these lanterns may have been threefold. They may have been used to light one's way while outside on Samhain night; to represent the spirits and otherworldly beings; and/or to protect oneself and one's home from them. Bettina Arnold writes that they were sometimes set on windowsills to keep them out of one's home. However, others suggest that they originated with All Saints' Day (1 November)/All Souls' Day (2 November) and that they represented Christian souls in purgatory.
Read more about this topic: Jack O Lantern
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed,—a, to me, equally mysterious origin for it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The origin of storms is not in clouds,
our lightning strikes when the earth rises,
spillways free authentic power:
dead John Brown’s body walking from a tunnel
to break the armored and concluded mind.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)