Jack o' Lantern

On sale at the shops this month you’ll find plenty of pumpkins  . . . all because of halloween at the end of the month.
 
It is part of the tradition of marking All Saints Day on November 1, which falls the day after Halloween on October 31.
 
But just where the idea of hollowing out pumpkins and carving faces in them comes in is a matter of conjecture, and largely depends who you are talking to.
 
Some say the traditions stem from ancient Irish customs, others say it  originates from Scotland, but either way the folklore goes back to jack-o-lanterns which were said to be originally carved turnips and were related to folklore about keeping the devil at bay.
 
But I now know where pumpkins come from in this part of the world — a number of fields like this where they are grown as crops. This past week the fields have been particularly busy as groups of pickers prepare them for trucks to supply the shops.
 
These days Halloween, or the Eve of All Hallows, is marked by rather more than the pumpkin, with children encouraged to dress up in garish  devil like costumes, and many have borrowed the American idea of calling door to door with the threat of promise of ‘trick or treat.’ 
 
It can be harmless fun, but unfortunately it’s one part of the Halloween tradition which can get out of hand. There was one Halloween I arrived home to find the front door had been pelted with eggs — and believe me the evidence is hard to remove from brickwork.
 

Since then we have always kept a handy supply of sweets by for that evening. Even so, my wife dreads the sound of the door bell that evening.  The odd thing was that on the evening of the eggs, there had been no door bell or knocking and it appeared the egg throwing was purely random, and had little to do with the traditions of Halloween other than the egg throwers were called ‘little devils’ or words like that but certainly much stronger.