How did the jack-o-lantern originate?
We thought the Yahoo! Halloween > Jack-O’-Lanterns category might shed some light on this strange custom, so off we went. The first site listed, Jack-O-Lantern.com, promised us history, so we clicked away and found a virtual cornucopia of information. The history link took us to a page outlining an entertaining old Irish folktale about “a stingy drunkard of an Irish blacksmith named Jack” who outwits the devil. At the end of the rather involved tale, Jack is denied entrance into heaven and hell and doomed to walk the earth until Judgement Day with only a turnip housing a burning coal to light his way (hence the name jack’s lantern, later changed to jack-o’-lantern). The upshot of the tale was that people would dress up in costumes, leave treats, and carve turnip lanterns to
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