The tradition of pumpkin carving has been around for generations. According to Britannica.com, “Their origin comes from an Irish myth about Stingy Jack, who tricked the Devil for his own monetary gain. When Jack died, God didn’t allow him into heaven, and the Devil didn’t let him into hell, so Jack was sentenced to roam the earth for eternity. In Ireland, people started to carve demonic faces out of turnips to frighten away Jack’s wandering soul.”

Throughout the years, Halloween has been considered the holiday where the veil between the human world and the underworld is the thinnest. Halloween originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. If you want to learn more about the history of Halloween, check out Annalia Wahl’s article.

The tradition of carving faces into produce originated in Ireland, and when Irish immigrants moved to the United States, the turnips they usually carved weren’t as readily available to the Irish. This led them to choose pumpkins, a fruit native to North America. Americans adopted the tradition along with Halloween as the Irish got more involved in their communities, and Halloween became a time of celebration, pranks, and light-hearted spooks. Nowadays, people around the US carve pumpkins as a family tradition, where families purchase a pumpkin from a pumpkin patch to carve it into faces or cool designs.

If you want to see pumpkin carving in action, then check out our video on pumpkin carving on the Titan Times website, where we try our hand at carving pumpkins of our own!