In the 1970’s when I was a boy I don’t think I had even seen a real pumpkin and everyone used turnips for Halloween lanterns.

Nowadays pumpkins are in every supermarket and I never see the old style turnip lanterns anymore.

Anyone out there still using the very British turnip for their lanterns?

I can still remember the wonderful smell of the slightly burnt turnip! Jumpers for goalposts and all that!

😆 No but I’m going to make one now 😀

if you’re good, like my dad, you can carve them so the eyes, nose and mouth are unbroken, wafer thin turnip flesh, then your candle doesn’t blow out ……

Brilliant, Im doing this

ha ha ha .. you were poor!!

we were poor too as it goes, but we used Mangelwurzels which were prolific in the fields round our way..

Two years ago I got confused in the supermarket and ended up making one out of a parsnip. Having heard people talk about carving turnips without mentioning any particular troubles, I remember being surprised at how fiddly it was. How my wife laughed 🙁

Will try to find the photos. Found em!

Are you sure it wasn’t a swede?
We used swedes, slightly bigger than turnips.

That parsnip is ace.

Turnips (neeps) are a Northern / Scottish thing. Swedes are a Southern thing.

In Newcastle, turnips were the bigger orange-ish fleshed things, the smaller white and purple things just didn’t exist.

For sentimental reasons, I’d have to use a turnip. But pumpkins are much better for it.

Love the parsnip though!

Everyone used to use turnips in our village when I was a kid in in the 80s/90s. I explained this to some of my contemporaries at university and they looked at me like I had stepped straight out of the 18th century.

When I said turnip I actually meant a swede, not the small white turnips but the larger things with an orangey coloured flesh.

Love the parsnip, my give it a go.

yunki – we weren’t really poor. I literally never saw a pumpkin in any supermarket or green grocers when I was a kid.

when or is it where did it become trick or treat ?

Scotland, 60s, you were meant to be dressed up and had to have a joke/poem/story to tell in return for goodies and it was called guising in my day

No trick or treating allowed here, I tell them that the proper thing to say is ‘The sky is blue the grass is green may we have our halloween’. I insist that any guisers who come a calling do sing a song or tell a joke/poem and believe it or not I get away with it.

We used to pinch the sugar beet out of the fields down the road and use them .

Turnips are also an Irish thing. After all swedes are just Swedish turnips.

And a big 😆 at the parsnip.

We had to resort to using a watermelon last year

Yeah they don’t do guising round here – think that’s mainly a Scottish thing.

I do get them dookin for apples though: well they have to drop a big fork at them anyway. Too much makeup these days too get them dookin with their mouths. I put coins in the backs of the apples: some pennies, some pounds.

Also get them to do a lucky dip: big bucket full of halloween sweets (eyeballs, fingers etc) plus a few plastic creepy crawlies.

Oh and yeah, used to use turnips when I was a lad but pumpkins are waaaay easier to carve.

Rutabaga anyone?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutabaga

Bit sad to see the various regional versions of neeps and guising being replaced by the homogenised US “trick or treat”

in Leeds, Turnip & Swede were interchangeable names for the same thing – a swede. We called it a turnip, but it was in fact a Swede. not to be confused with these:

Scottish family growing up in NW England.

Turnips (that were actually swedes) – check
Dookin for apples both hands behind your back face in as well as stood on a chair over a basin of water with fork dropped from between your teeth – check

Got all middle class and switched to honeydew melons in later childhood – lovely smell toasted melon.

Using anything other than a pumpkin for a jack-o-lantern is just un-American! 8)

Aged 5, you hold a Brace and bit to hollow out the turnip While dressed as a policeman and your sister (Holly Hobby) turns the brace.

If you were born after 1988ish you will not have a clue what we are on about.

And dropping a fork is for shandy drinking poofs and school. Face under the water and do it properly.

And treacle scones or pancakes with syrup hanging from string is compulsory. As is your party piece. nae trick or treat in this hoose.

And dropping a fork is for shandy drinking poofs and school. Face under the water and do it properly.

That’s not really fair on the kids (and parents) that have spent hours on face paints and make up though.
Not exactly hygienic to have 40 odd kids trying to bite the same six apples either!

(Oh and easy on the casual homophobia please eh?)

Ahhhh going out guising with my freinds, wearing homemade costumes!! Knocking on somebody’s door and a chorus of “May I have my Halloween?” when the door opened! 😀