I hate the way that Hallowe’en has become a tacky, tawdry tat-fest. Where once church bells clanged out across the land to ward off evil, the only ringing you hear these days comes from supermarket tills chinging up sales of purple child-sized witch hats made from suspiciously flammable fibres.

I blame America.

Much of the cheap commercialism that passes for culture in Britain today has been imported from across the Atlantic, and Hallowe’en in its current grotesquely venal incarnation, is no exception.

Hundreds of years ago when I was a child, the most you expected around October 31 was to see John Noakes demonstrating his fail-safe recipe for toffee apples on Blue Peter. As a special bonus you might invited to a friend’s Brownie group Hallowe’en party, where a game of pin the pixie on the toadstool was the highlight of the proceedings.

Back in the day we weren’t particularly interested in Hallowe’en, you see. Bonfire night with its flaming pyres, fireworks, sausages on sticks and mugs of soup was much more fun.

Then the Health and Safety squad got involved and suddenly, unless you had enough insurance to cover the equivalent of a nuclear strike on a small African state, all the sparkle went out of the situation.

For decades, respectable, decent responsible people with names like Mr and Mrs Wilkins or The Critchlows had been organising little local bonfire evenings in their back gardens, with all the proceeds going to something like the Watford Hospice, only to be told that their efforts were downright dangerous.

I grew up on Watford’s Cassiobury Estate in the 1970s and half term in October was a social highlight of the year. Along with decorous Hallowe’en affairs laid on by various Cub, Brownie and Girl Guide packs, there were usually three or four charity bonfire evenings to go to in various neighbours’ back gardens, and at the end of the week there was the fantastic annual firework display in Cassiobury Park organised by the Round Table.

The most impressive aspect of the latter being the utterly stupendous, towering inferno that actually lit up all the darkened pathways, guiding people to the display area like a flaming beacon.

In these highly litigious times, I understand that only the very boldest local authorities would risk having a real bonfire as the centrepiece of celebrations to mark November 5th. Which, of course, misses the point entirely - it’s a tragedy that these days we are such scaredy cats that we’ve taken the bonfire out of bonfire night for Health and Safety reasons.

I think that’s where the rot set in.

At this time of year as the days flicker briefly on the horizon at about 9am and then give up the ghost at 4.15pm, there’s something primal about our need to pile up logs and set light to them. It’s the bonfire with its power to ward off the dark and banish evil shadows that’s really at the heart of both the Hallowe’en festivals and Guy Fawkes’ night. It’s no coincidence that they occur at the same time.

The Founding Fathers of America took these seasonal traditions across the ocean with them, but rather than celebrate the salvation of a monarchy and parliament they were running away from, they decided to ignore the Guy Fawkes element of the proceedings and concentrate on the supernatural side of things.

If you’ve even seen The Crucible, you’ll appreciate that they were quite a superstitious bunch at the best of times.

Back on this side of the pond, as we have now thoroughly succeeded in drowning any life or significance out of our own festivities to mark the onset of winter, we’ve left a dangerous door open through which shopkeepers are allowing the import of mountains of tat.

American marketeers are selling us back a grossly mutated version of a festival we gave them.

It’s not just the piles of Hallowe’en junk currently on sale in high street shops that annoy me (although I imagine that if you put a match to them you’d get a really good fire going), it’s also the newly imported ‘customs’.

Most especially I abhor the monstrous habit of trick or treating which now seems to be accepted as a traditional Hallowe’en activity and yet which actually dates in this country back as far as about 1989.

My husband recently tried to explain to explain to a young colleague why old people in particular found it frightening to open their door on a dark October evening to find a group of masked youths on the step demanding treats with menaces.

“But that’s just mad, innit?” she squawked, “I mean, everyone knows it’s traditional. S’bin going for, like, hundreds of years.”

Even when he pointed out that this wasn’t actually true, she found it hard to accept that there was anything wrong about dressing your child up in a weird costume and setting it loose on the streets to beg at the houses of complete strangers.

Do read that last sentence again and meditate for a moment.

Trick or treating is a horrible custom imported directly from America. It makes a complete mockery of the fact that for 99 per cent of the year parents warn their children not to talk to strangers or take sweets from them. Then, confusingly, on October 31, it is apparently totally acceptable to encourage your oddly costumed child to knock on doors and not only talk to people they don’t know from Adam, but also to badger them for treats.

Groups of sweet-natured toddlers chaperoned by anxious parents are just about acceptable, but the dark side of this ‘custom’ is that it gives teenage thugs carte blanche to do the same thing.

I applaud Waltham Forest Council’s advice to shopkeepers not to sell eggs and flour to teenagers this week in an attempt to quell bad behaviour during Hallowe’en.

Last year, one of my friends had her front door pelted with eggs when she refused to give money to group of mask-wearing youths. I should point out that she has two small children herself and far from hating Hallowe’en she had just returned with them from an after-hours apple bobbing party at their school. In fact, her daughter was still dressed in her purple witch costume when her mum opened the door.

Little Issy was far more traumatised by the hostility of the teenagers and the cracking sounds as eggs were thrown at the front door than any number of stories featuring things that go bump in the night.

For many people, Hallowe’en is genuinely frightening these days… but that’s because we have allowed it to become a monster.