Why We Carve Pumpkins (and Other Halloween Traditions Explained)
Most Halloween traditions feel like they've just always existed, but nearly every one has a specific, traceable origin, and most of them are stranger than you'd expect.
Jack-o'-lanterns
The carved pumpkin traces back to an Irish folktale about a man named Stingy Jack, who tricked the devil multiple times and, upon dying, was barred from both heaven (for his general dishonesty) and hell (because he'd annoyed the devil one too many times). Condemned to wander the earth, he carried a single burning coal inside a hollowed-out turnip to light his way. The Irish began carving frightening faces into turnips and other root vegetables to ward off Stingy Jack and similar wandering spirits, placing them in windows and near doors. When Irish immigrants brought the tradition to America, they discovered pumpkins, native to the continent and much easier to carve, and the jack-o'-lantern as we know it was born.
Trick-or-treating
We touched on this in our piece on where Halloween actually comes from, but it's worth its own explanation: the practice descends from medieval "souling" (going door to door for soul cakes in exchange for prayers) and later "guising," where people in costume would perform a small trick, a song, a joke, a poem, in exchange for food. The modern, candy-specific, kid-focused version really solidified in mid-20th-century America, partly as a deliberate community effort to channel Halloween mischief into something more structured.
Black cats and bad luck
The association between black cats and Halloween (and misfortune generally) goes back to medieval European folklore, where cats in general, and black ones especially, were linked to witchcraft and the supernatural. Black cats were sometimes believed to be witches' familiars or even witches themselves in animal form. That superstition got folded into Halloween imagery alongside witches and broomsticks, even though it has nothing to do with the holiday's original Celtic roots.
Bobbing for apples
This one actually predates Halloween's costume and candy associations. Bobbing for apples is tied to Roman harvest festivals, particularly one honoring Pomona, the goddess of fruit and abundance, which got absorbed into Samhain-adjacent customs over time. In some versions of the tradition, it was even used as a kind of courtship game or fortune-telling exercise, the first person to successfully bite an apple was said to be the next to marry.
Candy corn
Unlike most entries here, candy corn has a precisely datable origin: it was invented in the 1880s by George Renninger at the Wunderle Candy Company, and was originally marketed simply as "Chicken Feed" since it was shaped to resemble corn kernels (corn was, at the time, primarily livestock feed, which is also why the original packaging featured a rooster). It became associated specifically with Halloween mostly through marketing in the early-to-mid 20th century, well after the candy itself was invented.
Why these traditions stuck around
What's notable about all of these is how much they've been reshaped by each generation that adopted them, a Celtic spirit-warding ritual becomes an Irish folk tale becomes an American craft project; a Roman fertility game becomes a kids' party activity. Halloween has always been an unusually absorbent holiday, picking up customs from wherever it traveled and reshaping them into something new rather than replacing them outright.
Quick FAQ
**Why pumpkins instead of turnips?** Pumpkins are native to North America and were far more abundant and easier to carve than the turnips traditionally used in Ireland and Scotland, so immigrants switched once they arrived.
**Is the black cat superstition specific to Halloween?** No, it's a broader, older European superstition that Halloween imagery absorbed over time rather than originated.
**Did candy corn start as a Halloween candy?** Not originally, it was created in the 1880s as a general confection styled after corn kernels and only became strongly associated with Halloween through later marketing.