The Tale of the Jack-O-Lantern

The Tale of the Jack-O-Lantern

Long, long ago in the land we now call Ireland, there lived a mean and tricky man named Jack. In fact, he was so sly he actually fooled the devil. One night, maybe it was Halloween night, he convinced the devil to climb a tree. As the devil moved from branch to branch, higher and higher, Jack carved a cross in the trunk. The power of the cross is so strong that the devil was trapped and couldn’t get down. To this day, we don’t know for sure how the devil got free. But when Jack died, he couldn’t get into heaven because he had lived a mean  and selfish life. Neither could he get into hell because he had tricked the devil. He was forced to wander the earth until judgment day. He owned nothing but a single turnip, and the devil gave him an ember, which he placed inside the hollowed-out turnip to serve as a lantern to light his way.

As time went by people remembered how Jack had trapped the devil and they began to carry lighted turnips on Halloween to frighten away evil spirits. When Irish families immigrated to the United States, they brought the jack-o-lantern custom with them. Here they began to use pumpkins instead of turnips because they were easier to carve.