Thanks to the Americans, Halloween is a lot more fun

The festivities are now enjoyed by people of all ages, not just the very young.

What a macabre week it’s been for monsters, ghouls and bloodthirsty vampires.

And I’m not just taking about the Lady Gagas and living dead that littered our streets and thankfully clogged my clubs over Hallowe’en on Thursday night.

No! There was the slavering undead energy cabal greedily protecting their interests at a recent Commons select commission and the scary movie cast of defendants and prosecutors that lined up for the News Of The World hacking trial.

Then there was the terrifying sum that was paid to ex social services chief Sharon Shoesmith plus the awful realisation that real monsters, capable of the most heinous of crimes do indeed exist. Vile, inhuman individuals like Thomas Brogan who viciously battered to death 90-year-old Georgina Barnett.

Yes, this week has had many horrors as well as the usual assortment of bangers and rockets.

But it’s to Halloween I return and the debate that always rages at this time of year on whether this occasion has lost its appeal and become too Americanised and commercial.

To be honest I was one of those who used to lament the past dooking for apples, making our own costumes instead of buying them and “guising” instead of the sickly sounding Trick or Treating. Not any more!

Yes, it has become Americanised, but what do we expect when almost everything we watch, listen to, download or play on the computer originates from the States? Especially when it involves horror . . .

Halloween has become more commercial I prefer to use the word sanitised but in a good way. Because it has become more accessible and acceptable an occasion enjoyed by all rather than just the very young.

It has become almost a week of festivities, instead of one night. A festival that used to only be enjoyed by Mexicans, Latin Americans or on the Iberian Peninsula with their Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) festivities, is now an occasion that sees many people dressing up and going out to party and enjoy themselves.

The commercial rewards and benefits it brings are felt not just by the supermarkets, but by a whole host of businesses, charities, halls, schools, pubs, clubs, restaurants, hotels and taxis, to list but a few.

Halloween has for many, and I include myself here, become the busiest night of the year, knocking spots off Christmas Eve and Hogmanay.

And for that, in these austere times, we should thank the Yanks especially when it pulls people away from their various boxes.

Guising, or rather trick or treating (yeuch!), for the very young still happens, but it is on the wane. Paranoid parents now accompany their children safely round the houses when in my day we were left to run riot and fend for ourselves.

The bad jokes and rotten songs are still there, as are the monkey nuts and sweets, now backed up with half that week’s wages.

But instead of the door being opened by some miserly misery guts forcing the kids to do an awful turn, the chances are it will now be opened by a couple rushing out dressed as Satan’s Spawn intent on joining the night’s festivities in the city.

They say all good things come to an end Christmas, Easter, Hogmanay, even Guy Fawkes Night has started to fizzle out (due mainly to the PC brigade scaring parents). And Halloween will one day no doubt fall off the radar as well.

For me the rot will start the moment some cretin sends me a Happy Halloween card.

That will be a very grave day indeed and one I’ll kick up merry hell about.