Jack-O-Lantern

Our family will not do jack-o-lanterns b/c of how it originally started out as. One reason is that the Celtics used them to ward off evil spirits. Another reason is b/c itis an ancient symbol for a "damned soul" and named for a man called "Irish Jack" The story goes that Jack was a stingy drunk who tricked the devil into climbing an apple tree for an apple, Jack then cut the sign of a cross into the trunk of the tree, thereby preventing the devil from coming down again. Then Jack forced the devil to swear he would never come after Jack's soul. The devil agreed, reluctantly. When Jack died, he was turned away at the gates of heaven b/c of his problem with drinking and his life of selfishness. After beiing dent to hell, the devil also rejected Jack, keeping his earlier promise. Since Jack could not enter eithe rplace, he was condemned to wander the earth. As he was leaving hell, eating a turnip, the devil threw a hot coal at him. Jack put the coal in his turnip and was doomed to wander in darkness with his "jack-o-lantern" until judgement day. With this tradition in mind people began to hollow out turnips, placing candles inside, to scare away evil spirits from their houses. America replaced the turnip with a pumpkin. We choose not to have one b/c of all this behind it. Yes, we could dismiss this, but we could also dismiss a lot of other things too, but we feel this would not be pleasing to the Lord.