Pumpkins

One of my favorite things to do during the month of October is to carve pumpkins. Usually I would just draw the typical face and have my dad saw out the face. I don't have much patience to sit and work on a project for 5 continuous hours, but last night I did. I decided to carve out the Minnesota Wild's logo. They are my favorite hockey team. (It's funny my sister has a blog and her post had to do about sticking with a team regardless of how well they do.) The Wild hasn't been doing so well, but I'm not going to switch to another team, just because mine tends to lose.

This is my pumpkin. Not exactly the greatest picture, but I think it turned out rather cool.

As we were laboriously working on our pumpkins, one of my friends asked "how come we carve pumpkins anyways?" I thought that years ago people carved them and lit them to keep evil spirits away, but I wanted to find out more. It all started in Ireland and Scotland during the 17th century. They originally carved turnips but after the potato famine sent thousands of immigrants to America they then began carving pumpkins. There are stories about how the carved pumpkin got the name jack o'lantern. One version of the story that I like was "There was a guy named Stingy Jack and he was having a drink with the devil. When the bill came Jack refused to pay. Somehow Jack convinces the devil to turn into a coin. Jack puts the coin/devil in his pocket. Jack also has a cross in his pocket which makes the devil powerless. Before Jack released the devil he made sure the devil would never claim his soul. Jack managed to save his soul from the devil, but God wouldn't let him into heaven. So Jack was stuck to walk the earth in darkness. Jack cried to the devil and asked how he could find his way through the darkness, the devil laughed and gave him an ember from the eternal fire. However, the ember was too hot so Jack put the ember in a carved turnip." Thus we have the beginning of the jack o'lantern.