Why we shape and carve pumpkins, not turnips

vIndianz.com (29 Oct, 2009) — Large orange veggies are pretty bizarre to the extent celebration symbols go, however there are definite historical reasons that we shape and carve pumpkins every Halloween.

pumpkins400 Similar to Halloween itself, the exhibit and carving of pumpkins ranging from the lanterns positioned indoors to the scary faces we choose — has pagan beginning that morphed with the course of time as well as the journey of an ocean.

The contemporary traditions of Halloween have roots in a Celtic holiday called Samhain, which was fêted all through Western Europe (but particularly Ireland) every Oct. 31 to mark the ending of the summer and the last harvest.

As the tipping point that too ushered in the start of the “dark season,” it was assumed that the nighttime opened a type of entry to the Otherworld, letting spirits wander on the Earth.

“The feast of Samhain was the time of stock-taking and in-gathering, of reorganizing communities for the winter months, counting the preparation of quarters for wandering warriors and shamans,” wrote Nicholas Rogers, a historian at York University in Toronto, in his book Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night (Oxford University Press, 2002). “It was too an era of supernatural concentration, when the forces of darkness and decompose were said to be overseas, spilling out from the sidh, [or] the ancient barrows or hills of the countryside.”

To battle the danger, ancient Celts frequently held powerful bonfires — flames being a general means to ward off evil spirits.

The practice continued all through the region even subsequent to Christianity took hold in the Middle Ages and the celebration was renamed All Hallows Eve. Afterwards, in towns, the fires shrank and were positioned as a substitute within turnips or gourds, which were low-cost, readily obtainable and secure “containers.”

“Initially they were only pierced to release light, and were carried to frighten away the spirits from the Otherworld who might come into the mortal kingdom,” said Verlyn Flieger, a mythology expert at the University of Maryland. Carving the gourds became widespread over time, Flieger explained. “Designed to ward off creepy faces, they steadily took on the aspects of the very foes they were supposed to preclude,” she told LiveScience.

All Hallows Eve came to North America “by boat, similar to everything else, accepted by European immigrants to the New World,” Flieger said. The festival exploded in the United States and Canada with the wave of Irish that came over throughout that country’s potato scarcity in the middle 19th century.

The new Americans couldn’t come across their standard produce to carve at Halloween, nonetheless, so they turned to a realistic reproduction.

“Gourds were limited in the New World and turnips were even scarcer, so pumpkins became the veggie of choice,” said Flieger.

Some amusing facts regarding pumpkins, according to the U.S. Census Bureau: The United States’ major pumpkin states produce over one billion pounds of the vegetable yearly, worth over $100 million. Illinois produces more pumpkins than any other American state. California, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York too add healthy crops.

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Why we shape and carve pumpkins, not turnips

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