Old fashion Jack O’ Lanterns

As many of you know Halloween stared with the Celtic holiday of Samhain, which goes back to the Druids of pre-Christian Ireland. Many of the things that were part of that holiday are still with us in Halloween, including the lighted, decorated vegetation that we call Jack O’lanterns. But pumpkins are a New World crop so what did the ancient peoples use? They used turnips and beets. And after New World crops were transplanted in Ireland and England it wasn’t the pumpkin that was there first chose in a new veggie to use, but the potato!