Should have posted this one yesterday, but sleep overtook me.
Jennifer Heath, in her wonderful book The Echoing Green: The Garden in Myth and Memory,
says this about what she calls "November Eve:"
Our house tonight is lit by jack o'lanterns. An eerie light, goblins sneering their sneery grins at us from the porch...
The house looks wonderfully weird, like a wild patch of ignis fatuus, the phosphorescent light in marshes; from this the terms "will-o-the-wisp-," "foxfire," and "jack-o'-lantern" come.
The will-o'-the wisp illuminated visions of spirit women dressed in white, running across swampy ground, radiant beings large and dazzling in human form ascending for the glow, pixies dancing in circles, phantom funerals, or corpse candles that forecast a death...
...The ritual lighting of candles, lanterns, torches, or bonfires guides the spirits, proclaims victory over the sun, or entices the sun's return."
and I love this photo from the Day of the Dead celebration:
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