Everything has an origin story. Even a few of them mixed together.

For the ancient Celts, Samhain was full of fire rituals intended to both purify land and scare off any trickster faeries and protect the farm from curses.

If you went out into the night on Samhain you’d tie a carved turnip on a string, aglow with a piece of charcoal inside. These glowing faces, called Jack-o’-lanterns referred to an old Christian tale about a blacksmith named Old Jack (sometimes called Stingy Jack) who, because he was so evil, was barred from both heaven and hell.

Instead his purgation was to roam the back roads on Hallowe’en night with nothing but a turnip lamp to light his shadowy way.

When Samhain was brought to the so-called New World (spoiler alert: not “new” at all), pumpkins were much more common than turnips, and so Irish settlers used those for lanterns instead.