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In fact, the name, jack-o'-lantern, comes from an Irish folktale about a man named Stingy Jack. Irish immigrants brought the tradition to America, home of the pumpkin, and it...
The term jack-o'-lantern was originally used to describe the visual phenomenon ignis fatuus (lit., "foolish fire") known as a will-o'-the-wisp in English folklore. [3] Used especially in East England, its earliest known use dates to the 1660s. [4]
Though jack-o’-lanterns are now an American cultural icon of Halloween, their symbolism is quite recent — and the story of how they came to be is a complicated one.
To make matters even more convoluted, there is another possible origin for the term “jack-o’-lantern,” one that eschews ghosts and devils and flaming bog farts and replaces them with something far more mundane: night watchmen.
The term jack-o'-lantern has been used in American English to describe a lantern made from a hollowed-out pumpkin since the 19th century, but the term originated in 17th-century Britain, where it was used to refer to a man with a lantern or to a night watchman.
As far back as 1663, the term meant a man with a lantern or a night watchman. Just a decade or so later, it began to be used to refer to the mysterious lights sometimes seen at night over bogs,...
Where did the Halloween tradition of carving faces into pumpkins and lighting them up come from? This custom stems from the old European legend of "Stingy Jack" or "Jack of the Lantern". In the tale, Jack was a man so devious, he was banned from both Heaven and Hell.
Jack-o'-Lanterns Origins. The tradition of carving lanterns to ward off Jack's wandering spirit began in Ireland and Scotland, where people created scary faces on turnips. They...
The tradition of carving Jack-O'-Lanterns has deep roots in Irish folklore and the term itself takes its name from the legend of Stingy Jack.
Although the legendary Headless Horseman and his hurled pumpkin have been scaring Americans for generations, jack-o’-lanterns actually trace their origins back centuries to Old World...