Q: Why do we carve pumpkins for Halloween?
A: The origin of carving pumpkins is thought have started long ago in Ireland. We found this answer in the book Halloween: An American Holiday, an American History by Lesley Pratt Bannatyne:
“Irish villagers once found their way through the dark of late autumn by the light of a lantern made from a turnip or beet. As time went on, groups of Halloween revelers carried these lanterns on their annual visits from house to house. In some places, they represented goblins freed from the dead.”
My the time this practice made it to America, it had changed a bit. In the early days of American life, townspeople would carve letters of the alphabet into pumpkins. Then “fortune-seekers” would be blindfolded and led to a row of pumpkins. Whichever letters they touched were supposed to predict the first letters of their true loves’ name. During this same time, Americans started serving roasted pumpkin seeds from inside the great orange squash.
Today, all across the world, we still carve pumpkins and turnips during this spooky time of year!
