After all, it is only the mass commercialisation of Halloween that is both new and American: it is more than a millennium since the Catholic church, attempting to convert the pagan Celts in Britain and Ireland, created All Saints or All Hallows Day to coincide with the Celtic festival honouring the dead.

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Halloween is a last hurrah of the powers of evil before their routine drubbing on All Hallows' Day.

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Both All Hallows' Eve -- known today as Halloween -- and All Saints' Day, which follows on November 1, were designated as days to pray for dead souls that had not passed out of purgatory, in the belief that the prayers of the living will help.

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