Three years into my medical career, I worked with a doctor called Darren. Darren was excellent. Calm, sensible, highly intelligent and extremely experienced. Friendly and supportive, he was sober in demeanour and scrupulously polite. So it was refreshingly out of character for him to attempt a shortcut through the geriatric ward on the night of the mess Halloween party, when dressed as the Grim Reaper.

That Halloween is chiefly about sweets for little kids, and costumes and sweets for teenagers, doesn’t entirely efface its origins

That Halloween is chiefly about sweets for little kids, and costumes and sweets for teenagers, doesn’t entirely efface its origins

“Perfectly natural to think about death, to be befuddled and anxious and even terrified of it,” wrote Joseph Epstein, “but it would be a mistake to let it spoil your day.”

To say we’re heeding this advice at Halloween – easing our dread by mocking our own mortality – goes too far. For grumpy adults like me the night is a sorry spectacle of Americanisation, until we remember that it was Irish and Scots emigrants who carried guising and turnip lanterns across the Atlantic, and what we’re suffering from is repatriation.

For kids it’s about sweets and fun and more sweets. Fortunately, sour as I am, I can still remember the fun of being a........

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