No Frost on the Pumpkins Here

Photo by Ken Bosma

Cowboy jack-o’-lanterns likely didn’t originate in Scottsdale (this one lives “down the road a fair piece” in Tucson), but Americans are given credit for first associating pumpkins with jack-o’-lanterns, instead of using other vegetables already in use in Great Britain. But, interestingly, pumpkins (including carved pumpkins with candles inside) were first used in the U.S. associated with the harvest season in general, and Thanksgiving in particular, starting around 1835. Not until around 1866 can the use of carved pumpkins be connected to Halloween. This poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, entitled “The Pumpkin,” was penned in 1850, well before the Halloween connection:

“Oh!—fruit loved of boyhood!—the old days recalling,

When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!

When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin,

Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!”