Di Andrea Romanazzi

Tradition holds that it was only around the 1700s that people began carving eerie, grotesque faces into turnips and placing candles inside them to ward off wandering evil spirits. When the devastating Irish famine of 1845 struck, many fled to America, carrying these customs across the ocean. Finding turnips scarce in the New World, they turned instead to the more abundant yellow pumpkins — a substitution that would forever shape the imagery of Samhain. Yet beyond the historical record, the choice of the pumpkin as the festival’s emblem invites deeper reflection: its ancient, symbolic ties reach far beyond this simple tale of migration.

It has always been associated with rituals of death and regeneration that characterize the worship of the goddess. The flower, called a lily, was usually associated with the dead; its pale yellow color reminded one of the color of bones, while the fruit, namely the pumpkin, was associated with procreation and fertility.

If we imagine that the Halloween lantern has modern origins, we only need to leaf through the Corpus Hippocraticum from 400-300 B.C. to read that:

“… if a woman has strangury, cut the head and bottom of a pumpkin, put charcoal under it, throw crushed myrrh onto the fire, let the woman sit on the pumpkin, and let her bring in her genital organs as much as possible so that her genital parts receive as much steam as possible…”

To our eyes, the description perfectly coincides with the witch-hunting lantern symbol of the festivity. The pumpkin is thus the instrument to ensure procreation; it is the primordial phallus, the impregnating element that arises from the earth itself and ensures life, especially in the darkest and most obscure period. Moreover, the pumpkin was also associated with the god Priapus, a deity of Greek origin later “adopted” by the Romans. The god, often represented with a human face and goat’s ears, held a stick used to scare birds, a sickle for pruning trees, and laurel leaves on his head. His most obvious characteristic was the enormous or even double phallus, a symbol of his fertile nature. For this reason, he was also represented by a vertical pillar with his head and erect phallus sculpted on top, precisely symbolizing fertilization.

The god was closely connected to the pumpkin, as we can read from the Priapeia:

“… I am invoked as the wooden guardian of pumpkins…”

And again, the memory of the pumpkin as a fruit linked to fertility rituals is found in many Latin authors who associate it with childbirth and pregnancy:

“…intertwined cucumber, and pregnant pumpkin creeps…”

or again in Propertius who writes,

“…blue cucumbers and swollen pumpkins in their belly…”

Thus, the pumpkin is a phallic symbol, but at the same time, it is “mother,” carrying in its fruitful belly the seeds. Like women and the goddess, it ensures life for its species and sustenance for men. When the Great Mother enters her period of “hibernation,” the pumpkin can assume another meaning—the fire generated in the goddess’s womb keeps her sacred splendor alive. Therefore, if the doubt about its Anglo-Saxon origin lingers, it is enough to go to Bormio or Lomellina to find among the farmers the custom of leaving a pumpkin and a lit fire on their gardens or windowsills. There are still many traditions that we could list, numerous beliefs and superstitions, but fundamentally, one common idea prevails: in the flickering flames of candles and pumpkin lanterns, the smile of a goddess who has always, although hidden, followed humans on their journey.