Key takeaways
- The legend of Stingy Jack : who tricked the Devil and was left to wander with a coal in a turnip : gave the lantern its name.
- In Ireland and Scotland, Halloween lanterns were carved from turnips, mangel-wurzels and potatoes.
- "Jack-o'-lantern" first meant a night watchman and the eerie marsh light called will-o'-the-wisp.
- Immigrants in America switched to the native pumpkin, and by the late 1800s it was Halloween's defining image.
Of all Halloween's symbols, none is as instantly recognizable as the grinning orange jack-o'-lantern. It sits on porches from Maine to California, glows on candy wrappers and greeting cards, and has even become shorthand for autumn itself. Yet its origins are surprisingly humble: a folk tale, a root vegetable and an ocean crossing.
The legend of Stingy Jack
The most famous story behind the jack-o'-lantern comes from Ireland. It tells of a man called Stingy Jack : a drunkard, a cheat and a born trickster.
In the most common version, Jack invites the Devil for a drink and, unwilling to pay, persuades him to turn into a coin. Jack pockets the coin beside a silver cross so the Devil cannot change back, and only releases him after he promises to leave Jack alone for a year. Later Jack tricks him again, coaxing him up a tree and carving a cross into the trunk so the Devil is trapped until he promises never to claim Jack's soul.
When Jack finally dies, heaven refuses such a scoundrel. The Devil, true to his word, will not take him either. Instead he tosses Jack a single burning coal from hell to light his way. Jack places it inside a hollowed-out turnip and has been wandering the dark ever since : "Jack of the Lantern."
Like most folk tales, the story exists in many variations, and it was attached to lanterns long after both existed separately. But it captures the spirit of the custom perfectly: a light in the darkness, carried by a soul caught between worlds.
A name with a double meaning
The phrase jack-o'-lantern is older than its connection to Halloween. In 17th-century England, "Jack" was a generic name for any man, and a "jack-with-the-lantern" or "jack-o'-lantern" was a night watchman who carried a light.
The same name was given to the will-o'-the-wisp, or ignis fatuus : ghostly lights that flicker over bogs and marshes at night. Scientists now attribute these to the combustion of marsh gases, but for centuries they were believed to be spirits or fairies leading travelers astray. It is easy to see how the wandering-lantern legend and the bog lights blended in popular imagination.
Turnips, swedes and mangel-wurzels
In Ireland and Scotland, carving lanterns at Halloween was common by the 19th century and almost certainly older. Children hollowed out turnips, swedes (rutabagas), mangel-wurzels : a large beet grown as cattle fodder : and occasionally potatoes. They carved frightening faces, placed a coal or candle stub inside, and carried them on strings or set them in windows.
The purpose varied by region. Some said the lanterns represented spirits or souls in purgatory; others said the fearsome faces scared away evil spirits roaming on All Hallows' Eve. Young people also used them during guising, the door-to-door tradition described in Trick-or-Treating Explained.
Try this: Carving a turnip is surprisingly hard. The flesh is dense and fibrous, and hollowing one takes real effort : which is exactly why immigrants were happy to switch.
Enter the American pumpkin
Pumpkins are native to the Americas, domesticated thousands of years ago by Indigenous farmers. When Irish and Scottish immigrants arrived in large numbers in the mid-1800s, they found a vegetable that was bigger, softer and far easier to hollow than a turnip. The tradition switched almost immediately.
Pumpkins were already linked with harvest and with the American imagination. Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) ends with a shattered pumpkin found near the scene of Ichabod Crane's disappearance : later illustrators turned the Headless Horseman's thrown head into a flaming jack-o'-lantern. As Victorian Americans embraced Halloween parties in the late 1800s, the carved pumpkin became the holiday's defining decoration, appearing on postcards, in magazines and in shop windows.
From folk object to icon
Through the 20th century the jack-o'-lantern became both more standardized and more creative:
- Purpose-bred pumpkins. Growers developed varieties with thin walls, flat bottoms and strong stems for carving. The Howden pumpkin, bred in Massachusetts in the 1970s, became the classic carving type.
- Carving kits. Small serrated saws and printed stencils, popular from the 1980s onward, made detailed designs possible for anyone.
- Artificial pumpkins. Foam "funkins" and battery LED candles let people keep designs year after year without rot or fire risk.
- Spectacle. Events such as the Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze in New York's Hudson Valley display thousands of hand-carved pumpkins arranged into sculptures and scenes : see Sleepy Hollow, New York.
The NRF's 2026 survey found that 42% of Americans planned to carve a pumpkin : on par with decorating their home or watching a scary movie.
How the pumpkin traveled back
In a neat reversal, the American pumpkin has returned to Ireland and Britain, where supermarkets now sell carving pumpkins by the ton every October. Meanwhile, museums and heritage groups in Ireland have championed the original turnip lantern, and some families carve both to keep the old tradition alive. Read more in Halloween Around the World.
Carving your own
The jack-o'-lantern's appeal lies in its simplicity: anyone with a knife and an hour can make something that glows. If you want design ideas, our Pumpkin Carving Masterclass walks through tools, techniques and patterns from beginner to expert. To follow the pumpkin from field to porch, read From Pumpkin Patch to Jack-o'-Lantern.
Or try carving in your browser first. The Pumpkin Carving Studio lets you cut real holes in a virtual pumpkin and light the candle to see how your design will glow : a no-mess way to test a face before you pick up the knife.
The light that keeps going
The story of the jack-o'-lantern is the story of Halloween in miniature: an old European custom, a folk legend to explain it, and an American reinvention that made it bigger and brighter. Stingy Jack may still be wandering, but on October 31 he has plenty of company.
Questions & answers
Why do we carve pumpkins on Halloween?
Carving pumpkins continues an Irish and British custom of carving faces into turnips and other root vegetables on Halloween to light the way and scare off spirits. Immigrants to North America adopted the pumpkin because it was native, plentiful and much easier to carve.
Who was Stingy Jack?
Stingy Jack is a character in Irish folklore, a drunkard and trickster who fooled the Devil more than once. When he died, heaven would not take him and the Devil had promised not to claim his soul, so he was condemned to wander the earth with only a burning coal in a carved turnip to light his way.
What were the first jack-o'-lanterns made of?
In Ireland and Scotland the first Halloween lanterns were carved from turnips, swedes (rutabagas), mangel-wurzels and sometimes potatoes, lit by a coal or a candle stub.
Are pumpkins native to America?
Yes. Pumpkins and other squashes in the Cucurbita genus were domesticated in the Americas thousands of years ago. They were unknown in Ireland when the lantern tradition began.