Jack-o'-Lantern

other · United States · North America

The jack-o'-lantern is a hollowed pumpkin carved with a face and lit from within, set out at Halloween as the American descendant of the Irish carved-turnip lantern of 'Stingy Jack'. In the legend Jack tricked the Devil and was barred from both heaven and hell, left to walk the dark with only a burning coal inside a hollowed turnip, and the bog-lights of swamps were long called jack-o'-lanterns after him. Irish and Scottish immigrants carried the tale to North America in the 19th century, where the larger, easier-to-carve native pumpkin replaced the turnip. The practice absorbed older Celtic t

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