The pumpkin, which many of us associate so strongly with Hallowe’en, is native only to North America, and grows nowhere else in the world. They simply did not have pumpkins to use as symbols, until about 300 years ago! The original Jack-O-Lanterns go back a little further, but were usually made from turnips or potatoes, and are a relatively recent European invention (c. 1200 A.D.).
According to tradition, the Jack-O-Lantern is the good-natured result of an old Irish-Christian wives-tale about a miser named Stingy Jack who refused his good wife’s exhortation to go to church. Jack instead frequented saloons, were he eventually met and tricked the Devil himself into paying for the drinks. A year later, on the eve of the Hallowed Day, Jack choked to death, eating a turnip. When he arrived at heaven’s gate he was turned away as an unrepentant sinner. At the gates of hell, Satan drove him off by throwing glowing embers of hell-fire at him, still angry over being tricked. Jack was doomed to walk between heaven and hell until the Judgment Day, still carrying his half-eaten turnip, in which burned the glowing embers he had caught. They called it Jack’s-Lantern, and Christians would put them up to mark the locations of their Hallowe’en parties. According to the legend, if Satan saw such a lantern he would turn and walk the other way rather than risk meeting Stingy Jack in such a gathering.
Isn't it interesting how a "Christianity" without an emphasis on the Scriptures fosters a folk religion that instinctively creates its own stories? And how, in this imagination, the Devil is always a more interesting character than, say, Jesus? And, not incidentally, that the gospel is absent?
At least it got a couple of things right: Unrepentant sinners don't go to heaven, and you can't swallow a whole turnip. So don't be a fool like Stingy Jack.
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