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It is amazing to see scary pumpkin head lanterns giving that toothy smile finding favor for so long among us on Halloween. Actually, Jack-o-Lanterns owe their origin to the ancient ceremony of feasting and welcoming the dead by the living that was once quite prevalent in almost all the communities in the past. This ceremony combines with the popular art of making masks of those days that were believed to embody the deities and spirits combined to give birth to the tradition of pumpkins carved as Jack-o-Lanterns. There was a time when peole used to keep relics of their ancestors in the form of heirlooms and their bones, such as skulls, and used to honor them on celebrations and festivities and invite them to join their parties and festivities.
These bones of ancestors and patriarchs were kept safe over generations and were considered sacred as old religions believed in presence of ghosts everywhere and thought that dead were only the altered form of living spirits. Thus, they used to invite their deceased relatives and ancestors to the party too by putting their skull at the meal along with other members of the family. It is believed that both ‘ghost’ and ‘guest’ originates from the German word ‘geist’ and it is interesting to note that in Northern England, Ghost and Guest were pronounced exactly in the same way. Since, Halloween originates from the pagan festival Samhain, this pagan tradition got transported to the present in an altered form, where pumpkin that is carved to look like a person’s head, became a part of all Halloween celebrations.