The tale of Jack Lantern.

Many people consider Halloween just another commercial holiday that is all about showing some cleavage and putting razors in apples. Halloween is really about celebrating the myth of Jack Lantern. The autumn before the harsh winter that devastated George Washington's armies during the great revolution was abound with crops and the villagers rejoiced. The greatest landowner in all of northern Connecticut was Mr. Jack Lantern, who's parents migrated from south Wales two generations earlier to humble beginnings but through hard work Jack's grandparents and parents left his with a rather large estate. Since Mr. Lantern owned the most land, he also owned the most crops. The people of the surrounding villages waited eagerly for the end of harvest feast where they would come from miles around to share their bounty and be merry together. Mr. Lantern, however, was a greedy man and decided not to attend. His crops, as a result, were to be absent from the celebration as well. The villagers were very unhappy. For many centuries, since the beginning of time, these people had shared their harvests, long before the indians they had run off the land. The villagers decided that Mr. Lantern was to be persuaded to share his harvests, for it was likely that many would starve and possibly die if Jack Lantern let his harvests rot in the barns over the winter.
As it happens, Jack Lantern had predicted just such a reaction. A man with a weakness for the Devil's libation, Jack had spent the several hours before sunset preparing himself to fend off the villagers with copious amounts of corn mash whiskey and a rather large stockpile of muskets. When the villagers approached the house, Jack climbed to the highest point of his rather large estate and began to make a show of himself. As the angry villagers screamed and yelled, Jack cursed back at them, the whole time drinking his mash whiskey. Anyone familiar with mash whiskey knows that it is not lacking in alcoholic content, and so when Jack Lantern decided that he would have a smoke of his pipe before he began to drunkenly murder the townsfolk trespassing on his land, the villagers jointly grimaced. As Jack heartily puffed on the pipe, the match flared and Jack's belly full of corn mash ignited into flames. Jack was immolating from the inside, and as he stumbled around in agony with the villagers looking on in horror, he tripped and fell, neatly severing off his head on a nearby gargoyle. The head, burning from within, rolled across the yard and neatly stopped in front of the barn, the glow from Jack's eyeballs lighting the sundry crops that were contained within. The villagers rejoiced and marched old Jack's head around town, and it burned and burned all throughout the feast, and all were merry and glad. Ever since that day, we carve pumpkins and light them with a candle from within so that we always remember the day that Jack Lantern got drunk and climbed on his roof.