We've read in the newspapers that Hallowe'en now challenges Christmas as the second-largest retail money-maker for the sale of home decorations, costumes and candy and other trick-or-treat giveaways. Decades ago when we used to drive through Pennsylvania on our way to spend a week in Washington visiting museums and art galleries there, we used to marvel at peoples' propensity to treat the occasion as a huge celebration for we had never seen anything as remarkable as the manner in which people exerted themselves to decorate their homes on the approach to Hallowe'en.

Now, it would appear, that the wish to hang skeletons, prepare lawn graveyards, carve pumpkins and invite ghosts to hang from your trees in celebration of ghouls and black cats, witches-on-broomsticks and evil-looking crows in their element of deep, dark night and the mysteries that human eyes cannot identify, has become near-universal.

While there are some countries and cultures and religions that hold the celebration of Hallowe'en to be incompatible with modern life, civil society and religious beliefs, the custom has made slow but steady inroads in the most peculiar places like India and China, not just North America -- and this, despite what authorities claim.

On our own street there are various attitudes to the event. Many people decide to absent themselves from their homes on October 31st, so they will not have to respond to ringing doorbells and children chanting "trick or treat!". Others simply leave their porch lights off and darken the interior of the house in the hope that children will give them a pass. And still others decorate madly, festooning the outside of their homes and their gardens with the most remarkably ingenious and often silly decorations, hoping to add to the delicious horror of the night.

When we first moved to our present home two decades ago it was common to have well over a hundred children clamour for edible goodies. But this street now houses more retired people than families and the number of visitors we've had have fallen off quite a bit. Last night we cannot have entertained more than 40 children, some of them young enough to be accompanied by their parents. Often enough parents drive their children to various neighbourhoods.

One little boy asked my husband, who is the designated loot dispenser on such occasions, if he was rich. Another little boy asked him if he was a priest. Stained glass windows in the house an obvious tip-off to a brightly inquisitive little boy.