When I was growing up, Halloween was a terrific treat. My father, who never did the shopping, always brought home paper bags full of nuts – Brazil nuts, walnuts, monkey nuts and filberts, which is what he always called the hazel ones. My mother added the coconut, wine apples, pears and grapes to the weekly order from the local greengrocer. I can still smell the wooden barrels filled with straw-protected grapes that met you at the entrance to the shop. The only other time we bought these seasonal treats – and in the days before we joined Europe they were very much that – was when we visited someone in hospital.

Hidden treasures
We always had colcannon with dinner, with three-penny pieces hidden in the creamy mash. The excitement of getting the ring in the barn brack at tea was another highlight. Then we waited impatiently as my mother peeled an apple each, keeping the skin in one long string, to be tossed over our left shoulder, to spell out the initial of the one we would eventually marry.

We had a rickety nutcracker, which only the adults could use effectively, and I don’t think I ever saw an intact shelled Brazil nut. They resisted their liberation stubbornly and we used to pick out the last little morsels with the tip of a salt spoon.

We dressed up in oddments, donned our masks and visited the neighbours, asking them to “help the Halloween party”.

“Halloween,” I heard one pestered mother say to her demanding offspring in a shop recently, “it’s not even Irish. All this trick or treating; it’s an American holiday.”

Celtic tradition
But in fact it was us, the Celts, who gave Halloween to the world. The Americans embraced it more enthusiastically than other nations and it is now the second most popular festival in the US after Christmas.

In Celtic times, summer officially ended on 31 October. It was called Samhain and it was supposedly the one night when spirits from the after-world mingled with those of the living, often possessing them. Therefore, people dressed in animal skins and ghoulish costumes to fend them off.

Taking it back – and more
Having exported all that was great about this feast, we have now re-imported many of the traditions, with embellishments. Orange and black are the official colours – black for the dark side and orange for the shades of autumn. For weeks before the event, the shops are stocked with costumes, latex masks, full-size broomsticks, witches’ hats, luminous skeletons, spooks and spiders as well as cobwebs by the meter to create the right atmosphere. Then there are the two-for-the-price-of-one pumpkins, bags of fun-sized chocolate bars and other treats that will fill the jumbo-sized booty bags.

Over the centuries other customs started. The tradition of carving Jack-O-lantern turnips has returned to us as scooped out pumpkins. Legend has it that a curmudgeonly guy called Jack had managed to outwit the devil. However, because of his evil ways, he was ineligible to enter heaven either, so his fate was to wander the world forever. The devil gave him an ember that he put in a hollowed-out turnip and that’s where that all started.

Parents get in on act
Then came the fireworks and bonfires and an increasing awareness of how dangerous it was to allow children out on their own, even to visit their neighbours. Parents started getting in on the act, going out with the children, usually standing at the gateway looking on as their little darlings twirled and pirouetted in their ballerina, batman, pirate or space costumes. Now amid the faux cobwebs and spiders, banners and fairy lights festoon the houses where there are youngsters.

Halloween is a much bigger business than ever. It’s worth $2 billion to the confectionary industry alone in the US. However, I can’t help wondering if today’s vampires, marauders, princesses and explorers will have any fonder memories than those which I dust off every year as I try to shell Brazil nuts by the fire.