Halloween has become the third best season for retailers after Christmas and Easter.

This is not because people are maintaining an ancient British tradition. It is because America made it into a marketing dream and exported it over here.

“We can get kids to dress up and go door to door in the dark begging for sweets. How cool is that? We can sell the costumes, sell the pumpkins, sell the sweets – it's a win win retail spin.”

And so it turned out.

I have ranted on before about the influence of America in our cultural life. We were fine with chip shops and Dandelion and Burdock until McDonalds and Coca Cola decided to dominate the world, with Colonel Sanders and pizza bars and Starbucks trailing in their wake, setting up fast food outlets like the outposts of a conquering army.

Take a look at our gallery of your Little Horrors from last year.

If we hadn't given up our American colonies so easily back in 1776, they would now be eating Greggs, drinking tea and proper beer, and the only Bud would be the original Budvar from the Czech Republic where it has been brewed commercially since the 15th century.

It's not that I am against everything American. There have been positives: Levi Strauss jeans, Elvis Presley, Ernest Hemingway, Angelina Jolie and Jamie Lee Curtis who, coincidentally, starred in Halloween the movie in 1978, that kick-started this relatively recent commercialisation of an ancient custom.

Although you might think it all started in America, it is held on All Hallows Eve, when Christians remember the spirits of the dead. But it is even older than Christianity and can be traced back to pagan Celtic harvest festivals. This was the night when the souls of the dead could revisit their old haunts (so to speak).

Halloween is on Thursday by when the nation will have spent £325 million on what is essentially an American commercially manufactured event.

Having said that, I shall, as usual, be contributing to the scam by buying bags of sweets to give to any children who call.

After all, it's not their fault, and I'm not really a Scrooge. I just pretend to be.