OPINION - Halloween right now is a fake feast — the old Irish version was far better than our Americanised nightmare

The trouble with Halloween isn’t just, as Rachel Johnson points out today, that it’s the occasion for large scale larceny by the young and conspicuous ghoul-related consumption by adults on an indecent scale; it’s also a loathsome revenant of its former self. I grew up with Halloween in its old form in Ireland and I can tell you right now that no one thought of spending money on imitation spider webbing, let alone zombie exclusion placards and no one resorted to pumpkins of any description — this was the turnip era. But then that was the time before Halloween, having been taken to America by Irish migrants, returned to Ireland and Britain in a hideous and unrecognisable form.