#EVIL JACK O LANTERN LIGHT KROGERS SERIES#

This is a far cry from the gaudy door-to-door candy bonanza of today, where stories of starvation and poor harvests have been replaced by images of plenty and dogs dressed as the Hulk. Children in Ireland and Scotland also used them, supposedly, as a lantern to help guide ancestral spirits home they would walk door to door and offer a prayer for a dead relative in return for food. Turnips are often far more grotesque than pumpkins, which is quite right as they are fundamentally about warding people off. The festival is, according to Rogers, 'making a comeback, having lost a bit of ground in the Referendum.' Outside the realm of ghost stories, Rogers says turnips were 'probably picked simply because they were cheap and available.' Turnips remain a traditional Halloween item throughout Britain and Ireland, though it is rare to see them anymore, so dwarfed are they by pumpkins so big a bloody truck can only carry two. The tale varies, but the message is eternal: don't buy a drink in Ireland you can't afford to pay for.

He now wanders the world, forever begging for candy. Lonely and terribly hungover, Jack carves out a lantern from a turnip, into which he places the flame. Eventually, Jack dies and finds himself in the logical conundrum that God, quite frankly, doesn't want anything to do with the sort of charming Irishman who could sleep with your entire family and then convince you it was a moral imperative to have done so, and the Devil, who has promised not to admit him to Hell.įucked, Jack is cast into a sort of purgatory, a land of eternal darkness, with nothing but a fleck of Hell's fire to light the way.

#EVIL JACK O LANTERN LIGHT KROGERS SERIES#

Hilarity ensues.Ī series of trifling episodes follow, involving trees and angry mobs, which eventually ends with the Devil promising not to take Jack's soul to Hell in return for his freedom. Not fancying the prospect of paying up for his pint, Jack tricks the Devil into becoming a coin to pay for it and then decides not to use it, choosing instead to keep the Devil in coin form (via the McGuffin of a crucifix) for bargaining purposes. Stingy Jack is the old Faustian legend filtered through the Ireland's tradition of good drink and cheekiness. 'The candle inside the turnip used to mean the wandering soul in purgatory, but it also means the wandering 'Jack' who tried to trick the Devil and was condemned to wander the earth,' says Nick Rogers, author of Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night.

Traditionally, both festivals were to celebrate the end of summer and take heed of a difficult winter coming. It's presumed that the Irish then brought the legend of jack-o'-lantern with them. Oh my gourd.īoth Halloween and the turnip lantern trace their origins to around the middle of the 17th century when Samhain-an Irish festival traditionally celebrated on October 31st to mark the end of the harvest-and Scotland's All Hallows began to merge, thanks to increased trade and immigration between the two countries. Pumpkins, by contrast, are a pretty new thing, with the first official recording of them alongside Halloween being in 1866. Sort of like how Bruce Wayne was replaced by Dick Grayson as Batman, turnips were the original jack-o'-lantern, warding off evil spirits before Christopher Columbus had even caught sight of a pumpkin, let alone brought its seeds back to Europe.

It's a fairly antiquated tradition now, but turnips have a stronger connection to Halloween than pretty much anything else. But they're absolutely terrifying, unlike pumpkins, which are increasingly becoming an arms race for who can carve out the least-crappy version of Justin Bieber's visage.

Yeah, the little bulbous brassica that Michelle Obama recently turned into 'a thing,' which was weird. Before the beautifully incandescent beasts ruled the October nights, a slightly less impressive root vegetable was king.Ĭonsider the turnip.

Evil jack o lantern light krogers