A Pumpkin By Any Other Name . . .

It always amuses me how, each October 31^st, every xian child in the USA gets dressed up in creepy (or cute) costumes and tramps from house to house demanding sweets.  Halloween, of course, has pagan roots in the Celtic Samhain, a festival of the harvest and the dead (something Christine O’Donnell might be relatively familiar with – or not).  The Celts saw the end of October as the "end of lightness" or the end of summer, and the "beginning of darkness," or the long, cruel winter ahead. At this time of year, harvests were complete, livestock were slaughtered, and community bonfires were started. During this transformation from light to dark, the ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and the spirit world became thin, allowing spirits to pass through. Some spirits were thought to be harmless, such as the family's ancestors; while other harmful spirits were warded off with the use of masks and costumes.

The next time you find yourself carving a pumpkin, you should think of how much more difficult your task would be if you were following the Celtic tradition of carving a much denser turnip or rutabaga. The American tradition of pumpkin carving actually preceded the popularization of the Halloween celebration in the United States, which is thought to have origins in the Irish immigration following the Great Famine of 1846. Pumpkin carving was a harvest ritual and was not specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 1800s.