When you start seeing pumpkins showing up in unusually copious amounts everywhere, you can safely bet that Halloween is round the corner!

But what’s with all the pumpkins? And how did the whole Halloween pumpkin carving / Jack-o’-lantern tradition start?

Once upon a time it was turnips rather than pumpkins that took center stage on Halloween!

It may be a bit funny to imagine it, but when the vegetable-lantern tradition first started, the vegetable of choice was not the pumpkin but the humble turnip!

And it wasn’t just the turnip that was turned into lanterns either. Swedes (aka rutabagas), beets and even cabbage stems were also used. These vegetables were used because these were commonly found in Ireland and Scotland where the Halloween vegetable-lantern tradition first began.

When Irish immigrants migrated to America in the 1800s (many coming to escape the famous Potato Famine of 1846), they brought with them their Halloween traditions but since turnips were not as prevalent in the United States as they were in Ireland, a new vegetable was used to form the lantern: the pumpkin. Pumpkins were larger and easier to carve as well as being readily available in America. In fact, even before Halloween was brought over to the United States, pumpkins were already the traditional October-time vegetable since they were abundantly seen in farmer’s market stalls around this time of year. After years of being used as the new vegetable-of-choice for Halloween Jack-o’-lanterns, word of the pumpkin’s use for Halloween was popularized in books, poems, artwork and later on also on TV shows, etching its place in history as the official Halloween vegetable.

But why on earth would you want to turn a vegetable into a lantern in the first place?

Why are pumpkins carved and lit on Halloween?

It all has to do with why Halloween is celebrated: Halloween is based on the ancient Celtic/Irish Pagan holiday of Samhain: a holiday marking the end of summer and the beginning of winter. Since the onset of winter is accompanied with the death of greenery and reduced cheery sunshine, this time of year was closely linked to death in general by the Celts. The Celts believed that at Samhain the spirit world and the human world came closer together, increasing the risk of spirits crossing over into the human world and getting up to ghostly mischief.

To help with ghostbusting, the Jack o’lanterns were invented. The idea behind the vegetable lanterns was that the (often scary) faces carved into the vegetables would scare away naughty or evil spirits and ghosts that were believed to get up to all sorts of tricks during Samhain. The lantern’s light also helped to repel the spirits of darkness.

Along a similar theme, in the original Samhain celebrations, bonfires were often lit to ward off the spirits and people dressed up in costumes to confuse the spirits so that they wouldn’t be able to recognize them thus protecting them from being harmed for any personal reasons. Later when Ireland was Christianized (around the 8th century), Samhain became a part of the new Christian holiday called All Hallow’s Eve, or Halloween, and with the passing of time this holiday eventually lost much of its religious bearing to become a popular secular holiday.

Why are Halloween pumpkins called Jack-o’-lanterns?

We’ve established why vegetable lanterns were made and why pumpkins are today carved on Halloween, but where did their name, the “Jack-o’-lantern” come from?

The term “Jack-o’-lantern” was derived from an Irish folktale featuring a character called Jack (also known as Stingy Jack or Drunk Jack). There are several versions of this folktale but this version is my personal favorite:

There was once a poor man called Jack who loved to sit at the pub and drink more than anything else in the world… even though he didn’t really have the money to keep up this habit and had a long overdue pub tab to pay. The pub owner was threatening to cut him off from the bar altogether if his bar tab wasn’t paid soon.

Years passed and eventually, as with all humans, Jack’s time came and he died. But since he wasn’t exactly Heaven material, Jack found himself reunited with the Devil upon his death. The Devil reminded Jack that he made a promise not to take his soul and therefore could not admit him into Hell. Instead Jack was condemned to be a lost soul, forever wandering through the twilight world. Before sending him off on his journey, the Devil gave Jack a little ember from the fires of Hell to light his way through the darkness ahead. Jack stored the ember in a turnip (or a Jack-o’-lantern!) and forevermore traveled through the twilight world with this lamp lighting his way.

Superstitious Celts believed that whenever they saw a spooky-looking light in the darkness with little explanation of its origins, it’s likely to be the ghost of Jack and his Lantern.

It is based on this folktale that turnip lanterns were called Jack-o’-lanterns, and when pumpkins started being used instead of turnips, the term was transferred to pumpkins too. Part of the reason they are lit is so that their light and carved faces repel lost soul ghosts like Jack from bothering them.

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Valentine’s Day is almost a worldwide phenomenon, celebrating romance and love every February 14th. In spite of celebrating it, many of us don’t really know the origins of Valentine’s Day nor why it’s celebrated. What is the history of Valentine’s Day and why do we celebrate it?

The first hints of Valentine’s Day celebrations began in Roman Times
Much like many Christian holiday origins, the history of Valentine’s Day began in Ancient Rome. At this time it wasn’t known as Valentine’s Day, but as the pagan festivals of Juno Februa and Lupercalia.

Juno Februa was celebrated on February 14th, after which there was the feast of Lupercalia. Juno Februa means “Juno the purifier” and it is thought that these festivals which both involved rituals of Februa (purifying) are behind the origin of the month’s name. Amongst several things, this festive period celebrated a purification from evil spirits, poor health, the barrenness of winter, and infertility. The Roman calendar was a little different from ours, so February would have been far closer to springtime than it is today. The festival’s association with increasing fertility may have contributed to the its link with love. Juno’s role as the goddess of women and marriage may have further helped link these festivals to the idea of love.

What exactly was this Lupercalia festival?
Lupercalia was an unusual festival because even the Romans seemed to be unsure which gods it was dedicated to. Some candidates are Lupercus, who protected flocks from wolves, Faunus, the god of agriculture and shepherds, or Rumina (also known as Lupa), the she-wolf who nurtured and looked after the legendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus.

The festivities involved two interesting traditions:

1. The Love Lottery: In everyday life, boys and girls were kept separate, but on Lupercalia there was a “love lottery” of sorts, where the names of the available young ladies were written on pieces of paper and put in jars, urns or boxes. The young men would then draw a strip of paper, and custom demanded that they would be partners for the festival. Sometimes these pairings were the bud from which long-lasting love partnerships would blossom.
2. Flagellation for Fertility’s sake: After sacrificing a goat and a dog, and after a grand feast, young men would dash around and “beat” the bad spirits, bad luck and impurities out of things by whipping anything in the vicinity with goat skins. Women hoping for a baby would present their hands to be struck to help them beat infertility out of their system, in a type of fertility blessing, in the hope of blessing married couples with children. A whip with the goat skin was also believed to ease the pain of any imminent childbirth.

These customs, and the association of February 14th as a day celebrating things like love, fertility and marriage, mushroomed into other countries as the Roman Empire spread across the world.

How did Lupercalia evolve into Valentine’s Day?
When Christianity became powerful throughout the Roman Empire, church officials tried to stamp out Un-Christian Roman festivals and paganism. To aid in the transition, some Roman festivals were absorbed into Christianity by retaining some form of acknowledged celebration on the old festival days, but attaching new Christian symbolism and meaning to them.

Conveniently, a few saints by the name of Valentine were mentioned in martyrologies on February the 14th, so in 496AD Pope Gelsasius banned Lupercalia and proclaimed this date to be a Christain saint day: Saint Valentine’s Day.

Instead of the un-Christian love lottery, the church started a lottery of Saints where instead of pulling love partners from a jar or box, a saint’s name was pulled out, and the aim was to model your actions for the next year on the chosen Saint’s revered and admirable behaviour. This didn’t really catch on and this tradition died out after a few hundred years. But the name Saint Valentine’s Day, and the old Lupercalian traditions of associating the day with love, fertility and marriage, stuck to this day.

So did Saint Valentine have nothing to do with love?

There are legends about possible connections of Saint Valentine with love:

Legend 1:
Some say that Saint Valentine deserves his name as the patron Saint of love. This story goes that Emperor Claudius II needed men to go to war to fight for Rome, and since married men didn’t want to leave their families, they weren’t good potential soldiers. Thus Claudius allegedly banned marriages and engagements.
Valentine, a priest at the time, is said to have gone against Emperor Claudius’ wishes and married lovers in secret, and was punished for this, earning him the title of the patron saint of lovers.

Legend 2:
Others say that just before he was about to be martyred for preaching Christianity at a time when Emperor Claudius II banned Christianity, he wrote a note to a girl to reveal his love for her, signing it “From your Valentine”, which lead to him becoming the patron Saint of love. It seems this story has no historical basis however.

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Some say that Saint Valentine didn’t particularly have a strong love story behind his tale of martyrdom, and that it is most likely that any connection to love links back to the Roman era prior to St Valentine’s existence.

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See related articles on the subject of culture including:
- Why do we have the engagement and wedding ring custom?
- Why do grooms wear a pocket square at weddings?
- Why do people go on honeymoons? And why do we call it a honeymoon?
- Why do we have the New Years Kiss tradition?

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Why do I have the day off on Boxing Day?
If you live in the UK, the reason that Boxing Day is a day off from work is down to the 1871 Bank Holidays Act. It was only after 1871 that the 26th December (or the closest day after Christmas that wasn’t a weekend day) was announced to be a Bank Holiday. It was largely through the work of Liberal MP Sir John Lubbock that Bank Holidays like Boxing day became a thing, since it was he who campaigned for the rights of shop workers and was a driving force behind the passing of the 1871 Act.

But where does the idea of taking the day off come from?
There are several theories about this.

We take the day after Christmas off because it’s St Stephen’s day, a lesser known name for Boxing day.

Incidentally, St Stephen’s day has everything to do with the “Feast of Stephen” to which we refer to in the Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas” that goes:

‘Good King Wenceslas looked out,
On the Feast of Stephen…’

St Stephen was the first Christian martyr. He was also the first Deacon in the Church, and because one of the main roles of a Church Deacon is to look after the poor, St. Stephen’s Day is often considered a day for giving food, money, and other items to servants, sevice workers, and the needy.

St Stephen’s message of helping the poor also reveals why we call his day Boxing Day. The boxes it refers to are almsboxes used to collect money for the poor. Christians carried out St Stephen’s message by collecting money in a number of different ways including a special collection day on Christmas Day. Sailors would drop money into a box throughout their voyage, as a donation to God to ensure their safe journey. Once safely back on land, the money would be donated to the Church.

Since early Christianity (which includes during Roman times), the day after Christmas was the day that Churches gave all the money they’d collected in almsboxes to the needy. The opening of the almsboxes is one of the strongest theories behind why we call St Stephen’s day, Boxing Day.

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In a similar spirit, employers often gave servants December 26th off to spend the day with their families. The theory goes that employers would give their servants a box of bonuses, or gifts, and sometimes leftover Christmas food. In Victorian times, tradesmen too profited from Boxing day as a day when they collected their Christmas boxes and gifts from happy clients, giving thanks for their good service throughout the year.

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Today, the spirit of giving is on the whole no longer really a part of Boxing Day, since most schools today don’t teach what the day was originally about, so most people never learned about St Stephen and his day of giving. But a similar Giving Spirit is often quite palpable in the air around Christmas time. So perhaps St Stephen’s noble generous spirit and giving nature still lives on in us around this festive season, regardless of whether we attribute this to St Stephen and the official Boxing Day, or whether we attribute it to a deeply ingrained, long-held tradition of maintaining the generous, giving, Christmas Spirit.

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Why do I celebrate Christmas on December 25th?

Why do we eat Turkey at Christmas?

Why do we sing Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s Eve?

Why do we have the New Years Kiss tradition?

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You’re at a New Year’s Eve Party about to ring in the New Year. It’s almost midnight. You look around for who you’ll be kissing at midnight… but wait! Why do we have this tradition of kissing someone at midnight anyway?

The Origins of the New Year Kiss
The tradition of kissing at midnight is a tradition borrowed from the Roman era, from the Winter Solstice festival of Saturnalia.

Not only is Saturnalia behind this New Year’s Eve tradition, but it is also responsible for many of our Christmas traditions (written about here), including the customs of kissing under the mistletoe, and putting up Christmas wreaths and trees.

But why do we kiss at midnight? What does the kiss represent?
Some say the New Year Kiss represented an eradication and purification of evil spirits from the year that’s just gone, setting you in good stead for a fresh new year.

In more modern times further superstitions arose around the New Year kiss; the main superstition being that this kiss would set the tone of your coming year.

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- Why do we sing Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s Eve?
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