10/13/2026
This Week at the Museums Second Sunday, our creative workshop delved into the history of the pumpkin and the Jack o lantern.
It’s interesting to follow the path of the pumpkin , the oldest domesticated plant in the world, and how it evolves into a central figure of celebration of Halloween.
Many know of the Irish tradition during the 1700s of carving a turnip which they used for a lantern. A turnip lantern was cheaper than a metal one .
October 31, Samhain , the harvest festival marks the shift of light of the year to longer dark. Superstition was this was a time when the veil between the world of the living and the dead would thin, and spirits could wander about the Earth .
In the 1800s Irish began to carve faces into the turnip lantern to frighten the spirits away during Samhain .
At the same time in England, in the 1200- 1500s, October 31 was also celebrated as a time of remembering the deceased . People would go “ souling”” knocking on doors , and offer to pray for the family’s deceased, in return for food and drink.
October 31 was called All Hallow Eve as November 1 is all Saints Day and November 2 All Souls’ Day.
As the Irish immigrated to the Americas in the 1840s to the 1870s . They brought their traditions with them. They discovered pumpkins were easier to carve and begin using pumpkins in their celebration of Samhain.
1866 is the first American illustration of a pumpkin jack-o’-lantern in Harper‘s weekly and by late 1800s the pumpkin becomes a Halloween symbol .
Summing it up.
All Hallows Eve becomes Halloween and 19th century Irish folk tale, of a stingy man named Jack, who becomes doomed to wander the Earth with latern , becomes called Jack of the lantern, becomes Jack o’ lantern.
Our workshop was using wool, it was felted with barbed needles into make our own form of jack o lanterns.
As always, the participants teach me as much as I teach them in the creative processes , with their own individual takes .
I’d love to hear your stories of Halloween in Owensville . ( my family didn’t trick-or-treat, too many kids too many costumes.)
In the meantime enjoy our pictures from Sunday . M .
