How Is Halloween Celebrated In Scotland?

[Ryan Ross]

Turnip lantern - take the largest turnip you can buy, cut off a slice so you can get at the inside and chop out the flesh as close to the skin as possible - make the inevetable gashes into eyes, nose and grinning mouth, pierce two small holes to take a string then place a stub of candle inside, ignite it through the nose hole, replace the original slice as a lid and then try to ignore the smell of charring turnip as it hangs by the string from some convenient suport.

Turnips are quite hard and the carving out is not easy nor quick.

The supermarkets set out pumpkins and Halloween tat these days and try to make a big thing of it, but it is only in the last four or five years that we have had anyone come to the door 'trick or treating'. They have battery powered orange plastic pumpkin shaped lights these days.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

I understand (or so I hear) that the Celts had a harvest festival to mark the end of summer, and they thought that the barrier between this world and the Otherworld was thin at this time; both good and evil spirits could cross into our world at this time, and while good spirits were welcomed, folks dressed in scary costumes to ward off the evil ones(hence, perhaps, why we dress in costumes at Halloween). As part of the Samhain festivities and rituals, the Druids would light bonfires in the hills. It was considered good luck to light the fire in your hearth with an ember from the druid's fires, so the families that lived in the area would carry a coal home with them. According to the story, they used a hollowed out turnip to contain the burning coal. From there, we get the modern carved pumpkin.

Of course, there's the decidedly more modern tale of Stingy Jack, who never did a really decent or generous thing in his life, and who tricked the devil into promising never to take his soul into hell. When he died, Saint Peter told him that he wasn't worthy to enter Heaven, but when he went into the darkness to find his resting place in Hell, the devil remembered his promise; he wasn't allowed to enter Hell either. The devil turned him away, but Jack said that it was too dark, and that he couldn't see to leave. The devil then tossed him a cinder of hellfire to light his way. Moving back, I suppose, to the prior story, he carried that cinder of hellfire in a hollowed out turnip lantern. So there's Jack O'Lantern.

A bit of a digression, I guess, but food for thought.

...speaking of food and British Halloween traditions, I made soul cakes the other day.


I don't suppose they're made (or even thought of) often at all, in the modern day, but I understand they used to be given out on All Souls Day(November 2). Children and beggars would go door to door, offering to pray for the release of the Poor Souls from Purgitory, in exchange for a soul cake(they're kind of like spiced shortbread, stamped with a cross). I guess we get Trick or Treating from that tradition.