Get out the rutabaga, it's time to carve a jack-o'-lantern. You don't have a rutabaga? Well then, a potato or turnip will do.  In Ireland, where Halloween began, the first jack-o'-lanterns weren't made of pumpkins. They were made out of rutabagas, potatoes, turnips, or even beets!

There is an old Irish legend about a man named Stingy Jack who was too mean to get into heaven and had played too many tricks on the devil to go to hell. When he died, he had to walk the earth, carrying a lantern made out of a turnip with a burning coal inside.  Stingy jack became known as "Jack of the Lantern," or "Jack-o'-lantern."  From this legend came the Irish tradition of placing jack-o'-lanterns made of turnips and other vegetables in windows or by doors on Halloween.

The jack-o'-lanterns are meant to scare away Stingy Jack and all the other spirits that are said to walk the earth on that night.

It wasn't until the tradition was brought to the United States by immigrants that pumpkins were used for jack-o'-lanterns.