Halloween: commercial trick or guilty treat?

If you've spent the last week cutting eyeholes into old sheets, disembowelling pumpkins and stocking up on red food dye, you'll know it's that time of year again - the celebration of all things macabre that is Halloween.

The naysayers
Amid the moans and groans coming from those dressed as mummies, ghouls and zombies, you'll likely also make out the moans of those who say that Halloween is little more than a marketing ploy, created by retailers and lapped up by consumers in a drive for maximum profit.

Samhain - Halloween's ancestor
Our appetite for all the trappings of Halloween certainly seems to be increasing, as year on year we spend more and more money on the occasion. But this gothic celebration existed in various forms long before retailers got their hands on it. Its origins can be found thousands of years ago in the Celtic festival of Samhain. This pagan event took place on October 31 (which was their New Year's Eve) and was believed to be a day in which the boundary between life and death came down and the dead walked freely among the living. Bonfires were burned to ward off spirits and the Celts dressed in costumes made of animal skins and heads.

Halloween today
Fast forward in time and many of us still get dressed up on October 31 and revel in all that goes bump in the night, although these days we've added a few newer traditions to the mix, namely pumpkin carving, toffee apples and our children's divine right to receive free sweets from neighbours.

Embracing our fears
Whether or not Halloween has become overly commercialised in recent times, for one day of the year children and adults alike seem to relish the opportunity to embrace everything that normally scares them. It seems that for all that we are revolted by the grotesque, it fascinates us; for all that we are terrified by it, it thrills us.