Everyday Things
Why do we carve pumpkins on Halloween?
We carve pumpkins because Irish and Scottish immigrants brought a turnip-carving custom to America and found pumpkins easier to carve. On Samhain night, when the dead were thought to walk among the living, people carved faces into hollow turnips and lit them with an ember. Folklore tied the lanterns to Stingy Jack, who wanders with a coal in a turnip.