Did anyone else carve a turnip instead of a pumpkin as a kid?

[FlyingMonkeys]

I can remember my mum always used to carve a turnip for Halloween. Was this a thing for other people too?

Yep, swedes/turnips here. I don't remember seeing a pumpkin IRL as a child tbh. Such hard work to carve! Pumpkins are a lot easier.

@QuantumWeatherButterfly
A Marrow?
That's just...it's just...I mean, how?

Yes (Northern Ireland!) dh always threatens to do it for dds but then sees me struggle with the buggers for actual cooking and gets cold feet

I also ate the innards raw.

Same here Louisiana - I still prefer turnip raw to turnip cooked (I'm in the NE too)

That's a brilliant story Billy.

And that turnip lantern is bloody terrifying Nakedavenger!

In N Ireland in the
70s we carved turnip (English swede) lanterns - we usually started off with a spoon and ended up with my dad getting his drill out.

Feeling very nostalgic for the smell- might do one for my English DC, who have only ever done pumpkins.

Pumpkins definitely weren't available in NI in the 70s/80s.

Contrary to much popular belief, Hallowe'en isn't an American import (though the modern version of it could be argued to be so); though pumpkin jack-O'Lanterns are, as @halcyondays said earlier.

In ancient British belief, spirits of deceased children awaited their parents in a sort of ethereal apple orchard, where they played with the spirits of other deceased children. Once a year, on Samhain, those spirits visited their former homes. Families would leave lit lanterns (often inside hollowed out root veg to prevent them being blown out) to guide the children home. They would also leave treats in remembrance.

Later, the rise of Christianity lead to a rebranding, with child spirits being recast as malevolent sprites - giving rise to an early form of trick or treat. The lanterns were also rebranded with a much corrupted version of the Jack O'Lantern story - there are various incarnations of this, but trying to disentangle the original is a task well beyond my skill.
Samhain would eventually be redrawn as a night of evil, followed by a rescue of the earth by the Saints - All Saint's (Hallows) Day - and became known as All Hallow's Eve or Hallowe'en.
Practice vanishes from record by the 14-1500s or so; but then Irish immigrants to the US mingled with French and Spanish traditions of Day of the Dead and a modern version of hallowe'en was born; and re-imported back to Europe.

Robert Burns wrote the poem Halloween in 1785. As I understood it was about Celtic traditions handed down over the centuries. Maybe he'd been to NY for his Oct hols and based it on that!

AdamNichol when you refer to the “popular belief” that’s a Halloween is American you must mean “popular belief in England”, surely? Those of us from Scotland and Ireland were brought up knowing it was part of our Celtic tradition and have never ever thought of it as American. Obviously we know how much they go to town on it, but we’ve always known that we gave it to them.

Yup we in Scotland know... Maybe she meant the whole crazy shebang of trick or treating?

But trick or treating is a more malicious form of guising, but the idea is similar.

Kids dress up in costumes ( usually scary ones), traipse around the neighbourhood knocking on doors and given sweets.

Guising usually involves a child doing a small party piece at the door, telling a joke, a poem or a song, and their reward for their efforts is a sweet.

My grandmother was born in 1890 in Scotland, and she told me when she was a child way back then she would do just that- a turnip lantern, an old sheet, soot to blacken faces etc
Her and her friends would go guising around neighbours houses and be given sweets, nuts apples etc.

AAaah! And the sweet was often home made tablet hmnummnummm!

But when you went guising you never thought of doing 'tricks' unless your party piece was an actual trick. You did your poem or song, magic tricks or riddle...

And no one over the age of about 12 would be seen dead it guiding uless they were made to go with their little siblings by their parents.

FekkoTheLawyer

So you see no similarities between Trick or Treat and Guising?

So kids dress up in scary costumes, Knock on neighbours' doors on the 31st October and get given sweets?

No connection?

Guisers don't 'trick or treat'.

They are supposed to entertain you and are rewarded with a small treat - not 'gimme or I will egg your house'. Very different behaviour.

FekkoTheLawyer

I understand that.

Excellent.

It’s very much about the ‘tricks’ here, or at least it used to be until the police started visiting the primary and secondary schools to stop it. (N Scotland)

Not at all about tricks here though tends to be jokes now more than poems and songs. Also N Scotland!

I'm happy to say it's no tricks here either (Durham). Just canny little bairns with their Mams until about 6.30 then a few in-betweeny new teenagers saying 'trick or treat' looking embarrassed with a bin bag over their clothes, never had 'tricks'.

Yep! Bloody killed my hand doing it with the potato peeler as well!

And we still have our fingers. It's a miracle really. DS can't be trusted with a butter knife. Kids today, eh?

We used to do them with pen knives - which we got for Christmas one year, and did an endless variety of terribly dangerous things with

Yes, we only saw pumpkins in American films/tv. Turnips is what we had.
It's only recently it seems Turnips now mean mini little things. (grew up in Yorkshire)

The best way to carve a turnip is cut the lid off, then with a sharp knife cut criss crosses in the flesh, the scoop out the little cubes, then repeat until near the bottom, then make the sides thinner with a normal eating knife by scraping the sides.

It was a long job, but as a kid it seemed well worth it. the shadows it cast on the floor whilst walking around the village were excellent.

So do people really not understand the difference between the two root vegetables (whatever they know them as)? Swede - hard orange flesh and turnip has slightly less hard white innards. Different textures when cooked. Different flavours too. How can they be confused as "big turnips and little turnips"!