Pumpkin Time
Orange, brown, purple, black and yellow. Colors that can make anyone feel good inside. There is nothing like cutting into a big pumpkin with your family and scooping out the innards, baking the seeds and carving a spooky face on them.
This week we will look into a brief history of pumpkin carving and Halloween.
A colonist from the 1630s wrote a poem that read,
“Stead of pottage and puddings and custards and pies, Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies,
We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon, If it were not for pumpkins we should be undoon.”
Pumpkins have played a big role during the autumn season throughout history. Some of the best memories I hold growing up was carving the uneven, scary, jack o’lantern faces and baking the seeds after scooping the gooey insides of the pumpkin out. Nothing seemed more pleasing than watching his face glow in the dark after my sisters lit a candle inside and put it on the front porch.
Today’s Halloween comes from the Irish festival of Samhain, the transition from summer into winter. People would carve faces in turnips and put candles inside, place them along roadways and fences around farms to warn of the spirts that may try and enter.
Halloween didn’t find its popularity until Scottish and Irish immigrants began settling in the 1800s. Even though it’s unsure when the first jack o’lantern was carved the children’s magazine “Harper’s Young People” in 1866 reported that “a great sacrifice of pumpkins” had been made in the Halloween celebration. Costumes, pumpkin carving, and trick-or-treating became standard in celebrating the holiday.
Facts about the beautiful orange pumpkins:
*Pumpkin seeds should be planted between the last week of May through the middle of June. They take approximatley 90 days to grow and should be picked in October when they are bright orange in color. You can save their seeds to grow more the next year.
*It’s thought that pumpkins have been growing in North America for five thousand years. They are indigenous to the western hemisphere.
*The orgin of the jack o’lantern comes from an old Irish folk tale from the mid-19th Century which tells of Stingy Jack, blacksmith who used a cross to trap the devil. Jack released the devil only when he agreed never to take his soul. Jack’s life had been too sinful for him to go to heaven but when the Satan he was not permitted into the gates of hell as well. Jack had no place to go. When he asked the devil how he would see where to go, as he had no light, the devil mockingly tossed him an ember from the flames of Hades that would never be able to burn out. Jack carved out a turnip, which were one of his favorite foods, put the ember inside it, and began endlessly wandering the Earth for a resting place. He became known as Jack of the Lantern, or jack-o'-lantern.
Along with the pumpkin come many other traditions with the mischievous holiday such as dressing up in masks and costumes. Those were said to be worn in attempt to ward off evil spirits, also children going door to door trick or treating. This has been called beggars’ night or hacker’s night throughout history. It is said to resemble Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of “souling,” when the poor would go door to door on November 1, receiving food in exchange for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day.
I leave you with words from poet John Greenleaf Whittier,
Oh!—fruit loved of boyhood!—the old days recalling,
When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin,
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!
Grab a pumpkin and carve away! You are loved! Until next time Life, taxes and…
Josh
