Since the idea for this came from a movie we saw within the past week, I’ve started this in Cafe Society.
One thing I can’t remember, try as I have, is the movie’s title, who was in it and other details. The only thing specific I do recall is that some woman was carving some vegetable at Halloween time to look like your basic jack-o-lantern. It was in Europe somewhere, on the Continent and not the British Isles, and I remarked to my wife that that was odd and wondered aloud at the origin of jack-o-lantern lore. I told her I thought the history of it was Irish or English or Scots (something British anyway) and that the original vegetable may have been a turnip or beet or whatever. Pumpkins being easier to carve and larger and all that made the pumpkin=jack-o-lantern connection we have today.
Jack-o'-lantern - Wikipedia supports my memory, but I wonder if anybody has (or can link to) a better version of the history of the things.
If somebody else saw that same movie and can clear the title up for me, that would be way past cool.
Since this OP hasn’t done a lot to limit the scope of the title, I would enjoy hijacks and spinoffs and whatever.
Links to threads on similar topic(s) already in existence would also be neat.