I've gone back to Jack...

Although I was born and bred in Ireland, I was surprized to learn that the Jack O’Lantern was a tradition that started in the land of my birth and stretches back through the centuries. When I first heard this, I thought it was a Plastic Paddy myth, because the pumpkin was never grown in the water-logged soil of Ireland and would have been an orange oddity to Irish people hundreds of years ago. I remember being a child in the 1990s, when elderly Irish people toddled around the supermarkets and marvelled at the foreign items like mangoes on sale which they had never imagined existed when they were children. Jack O’Lantern’s Irish roots rang true for me when I found out that our forefathers carved the original ones from turnips, a peachy vegetable that is particularly beloved in my hometown of Cork as a nutty-tasting mash.  

Most days of my childhood I ate turnips, and I have visceral memories of peeling and cutting their smooth, ivory hides, which is why I had an eerie sensation on learning that in previous ages our ancestors whittled faces from a hallowed turnip. When a turnip is peeled of its rough exterior, the surface looks like human skin and like a pale Irish complexion. To embellish a turnip with human features is to make a model of a human face. But traditionally it is not a beautiful face of someone with a lot of personal goodness. No, instead the Jack O'Lantern – when it is consistent with the model that the Irish crafted – has liar’s eyes, a crooked smile, and is beset with a glib charm and drunken expression in a bid to create the character of “Stingy Jack”. 

Jack is said to be a mythical figure and a creation of folklore. He was sociopathic, or at least a man with a disabled conscience, a self-hating drunk who never did any good to anyone but had Catholic cunning which he used to play the devil himself. Jack was a man who divided his time between conning people out of money and getting drunk. He travelled all over Ireland, going from pocket to pocket of the countryside where he found new people to scam. 

One night on October 31^st, Jack was wiling away the dark hours in a pub, when he discovered he was out of money and could not get his next drink. The devil appeared to him and offered to pay for his next drink in exchange for Jack’s soul. Jack agreed and that devil shapeshifted into a coin that Jack could use to pay for his next libation. But Jack decided against buying another drink, reneged on his deal with the devil, and put the coin into his pocket next to a silver cross which meant the-devil-as-the-coin was trapped by the power of the cross. The devil had intended to trap Jack, but now he was trapped. Jack then said to the devil that he would let him go – if he agreed to give Jack another ten years on earth – before he came to claim his soul.  The devil had no choice but to agree. 

Jack passed the next ten years in drunken debauchery, and when walking down a lane one day, he met the devil who was waiting to take his soul. Jack gave the impression of being ready and willing to go to the fires of Hell but said that first he would like an apple from the tree and asked if the devil would get it for him. The devil eagerly obliged, and scampered up the tree, but Jack put crosses all around the base of the tree and snared the devil once again. This time Jack would not release the devil until the prince of darkness had agreed never to take his soul, even after his death. The devil was bent to Jack’s will, and once again agreed. 

Jack lived his last years ever more debauched. When he died, he was barred from Heaven, and when he asked the devil if he were allowed in Hell, he was reminded of their agreement and denied a place there, too. Jack had no choice but to return to earth, and he had a lamp made from a turnip which he lit from the sparks of Hell. When he was back in Ireland, Jack roamed the land with his lamp, a lost soul estranged from God and the devil. 

In modern times, it is said that the old Irish used the Jack O’Lantern to chase away evil spirits, but I refute this, because the myth centres on the power of the cross to disempower the devil, and no where does it say that Jack himself or his lantern is a force against the evil ones. Rather Jack is so deceitful and so much more devilish than the devil that the devil won’t have him, and the myth of Jack suggests that there are humans worse than devils. This is the folklore of a humble people. And has such resonance with the Irish psyche, that they persisted for hundreds of years in planting in the memory of Jack in every new generation as every year they took to the hand-aching job of turning a turnip into a Jack. 

The Irish sacrificed a little food to evince a contemptible character which is also a representation of the collective conscience. I believe Jack is a type of representation of the people who stalk the Irish imagination. Ireland is an exceedingly hard-drinking nation where Irish charm can become an essential lubricant to swindle money from others. The Irish etched cultural complicity with sin onto the face of Jack O'Lantern. There is also Jack’s Catholic cunning, he used the cross as his defence twice, but to him it is a mere weapon in his hands, and evinces Jack’s self-interest, as opposed to true holiness, of which he has none. Again, this is an admission on the part of Irish Catholics of the sad tendency to use that which is holy in a game of deceit. 

After a jagged turn in my on-going conversion to Faith, I turned my back on every aspect of the events which unfold on 31 October that entails embracing and wearing the symbolism of demonic and witchcraft. I even eschewed the pumpkin as lamp or “Jack O'Lantern” because I assumed it was a depiction of a devil’s face. Yet I have reclaimed the Jack O'Lantern, not just because I love pumpkins as glowing globes, but because I believe the myth has powerful merit, and I am continuing a tradition which a sea of Irish people gave to America in the 1800s when they brought the myth of Jack with them. The turnip was traded in for the pumpkin which is soft as soap to cut, but I believe turnips are far preferable to pumpkins, because when one carves a face on a turnip, it looks ever more human. My campaign for turnips may go unheard as very year Jack’s likeness is brought to bear - religiously if you will - on the majority of pumpkins.  Jack is alive and well, not just as a canvas on which to carve cultural complicity with sin, but as a lamp to show our inherited vices and proclivities.  When we look at Jack, we often look at ourselves. 

You may also like a post I wrote on an alternative way to celebrate All Hallows Eve.

Here you see me puckering up to a Jack O’Lantern in Mayfair (photos courtesy of Selina Fang whose patience knows no bounds, as she snapped me in different poses).