• Halloween as we know it caught on in America in the late 1800s.jack-o-lantern image by Trevor Allen from Fotolia.com
  
  The tradition of carving pumpkins for Halloween stems from the Celtic tradition of setting carved and lit gourds in windows and on porches to welcome the ghosts of deceased loved ones and frighten away malevolent forces. When European and Irish settlers arrived in America, they found that the pumpkin was not only larger but was also easier to carve.
  
  

Traditional

• The simplest and most common way to carve a pumpkin is by hollowing it out and cutting the design completely out, and the most recognizable way to depict a wolf is in silhouette. Choose a design with a large full moon cut out of the pumpkin, with the shadowed silhouette of a howling wolf -- either in close-up or far away, sitting or standing on a cliff or hill -- left in pumpkin material. Cut out details such as eyes before you cut out the silhouette. Alternately, skip the moon and simply cut the wolf's silhouette out of the pumpkin, or carve out a detailed picture of a wolf's face.
  
  

Chiseled

• As of late, pumpkin artists have settled less for black and white (or orange and bright, if you will) for their palette and have begun using shades of gray by chiseling areas of the pumpkin thin so that light shows through but not as bright as the areas that are completely cut out, which can be used to great effect when depicting something textured, such as a wolf. Cut out areas such as eyes and teeth, leave shadows at the pumpkin's full thickness and chisel out a textured pattern of thick and sparse fur.
  
  

Carving Tips

• When carving a pumpkin -- especially when using the chiseling technique -- the inside of your pumpkin must be scraped completely clean. Do not, however, scrape the walls too thin. Carve carefully lest your carving tool slip through the wall of the pumpkin when it isn't supposed to. Before you begin carving, plan out your design on paper, and transfer it to your pumpkin with a stencil or carbon paper. A picture will lie differently on a curved and bumpy surface like a pumpkin than it will on a flat and even surface like the average piece of paper. Plan out where you'll cut, where you'll scrape and where you'll leave. Use sharp, thin knives, as well as tools like power drills, to make small holes.