Today, a Jack-O-Lantern is carved from a pumpkin, but it started out as a turnip-based custom. The name of this iconic decoration comes from an old Irish legend about a man named Stingy Jack. According to folklore, he asked the Devil to have a drink with him. As Jack was a miser, he didn’t want to pay for his drink and decided to convince the Devil to pay for both of them He tricked the Devil into transforming into a coin but as soon it was done, he pocketed it instead. He kept the coin next to a silver cross in his pocket which prevented the Devil from returning to his original form. Later Jack freed him, but that freedom came with a condition—when Jack died, he demanded that the king of hell wouldn’t claim his soul.

When Jack finally passed away, his soul was trapped between Heaven and Hell as the former didn’t want to let in a man as unscrupulous as Jack and the latter couldn’t because of his promise. But the Devil wanted to pay Jack back for all the tricks he played. He asked Jack to go into the night with only a single burning coal to light his way. Jack put the hot coal into a turnip and used it as a lantern.

And so the Jack-O-Lantern was born. The Irish started making their own versions of Jack’s lantern by carving on turnips. When Halloween came to America, the tradition shifted to pumpkins as they were easy to procure.