Did you know that Samhain (pronounced Sow-In) actually dates back at least 2,000 years ago?
Where did Samhain originate?
It originated in Ireland, where they used turnips (or what the US calls a rutabaga) instead of pumpkins to create Jack-O-Lanterns! They continued to do this until immigrants from Ireland moved to America and found that pumpkins grew here and were so much easier to carve faces into because they were bigger. Thus, that tradition caught on in America.
What is the History of Samhain?
This particular story of how it came to be is actually an old Irish folk tale about a man named Stingy Jack.
Stingy Jack was a very stingy blacksmith who enjoyed playing tricks on people. (Hence why Trick-or-Treat is now a thing for Halloween as well.) Jack even wound up tricking the Devil! Eventually, when Jack died, heaven definitely did not want the trickster and the Devil had too much spite towards Jack to allow him into Hell.
Being forced to walk along the Earth, Jack took a turnip and hollowed it out, placing coal that the Devil gave him inside. A Jack-O-Lantern is traditionally used to ward off negative spirits that may walk the Earth during Samhain, as the veil has been lifted between both worlds. The faces that we all take the time to carve into the Jack-O-Lantern are the protectors of our homes.
Jack’s Samhain Guardian Spell
Here is a spell that makes that scary-looking pumpkin into a Guardian of your land and home! (Originally found in Llewellyn’s 2012 Spell-A-Day Almanac)
