In 1607, the Severn Estuary in southwest England burst its banks flooding a huge swathe of land. It is estimated that the unexpected high tide killed as many as 2000 people. It has since been convincingly shown that the event was caused by a tsunami – a submarine collapse in the Atlantic had triggered a huge surge of water which kept going until it hit land. It was the first event of its kind in more ways than one: specifically, it was not lost on the rest of Europe that Britain is ideally placed to get in the way of bad things coming across the Atlantic, take one for the team, and stop them getting as far as France. Not that they’re grateful, mind you.  

Something very bad indeed that has come across the Atlantic is Halloween, which we are supposed to be ‘celebrating’ today. It’s a funny festival, when you think about it. A strange collision of All Saints’ day (the Catholic Church’s way of celebrating all the anonymous ‘also-rans’) and the pre-Christian, celtic festival Oíche Shamhain (Old Irish for ‘Samhain’ night, ‘Samhain’ being a festival of the dead), With that kind of heritage, Halloween was always bound to be a bit weird. In Ireland, where pagan and Christian culture have always been satisfactory bedfellows, Halloween is a cause for a major celebration. Fireworks are let off, barmbrack (a kind of fruit bread) is eaten, there is singing and dancing and, of course, plenty of drinking. Not entirely unlike any other night in Ireland in that respect, but with a more valid excuse, perhaps.  

In England, though, we’re utterly confused. Most of us choose not to notice Halloween. It’s a bit like sitting on the tube opposite somebody who has their flies undone: you’re intrigued, but you don’t like to look closely in case somebody notices and thinks you’re a pervert. The trouble is that, as with almost everything these days, we’re caught between two opposing cultures. On the one hand, we have the rest of Europe who are far too mature, sensible (and Catholic) to celebrate something as spooky and silly as Halloween. On the other, we have the American concept of the festival, which bombards us with Halloween-themed merchandise (plastic witches' hats, tridents, pumpkins and so on) and tells us that our children are supposed to dress as Satan (which, five hundred years ago, could get you burned at the stake) and run a kind of protection racket, extorting money and treats from the elderly with the threat of damaging their property if they don’t cough up (for my part, I live in south London – I get that every night of the year).

Faced with this upsetting duality, we experience what political theorists call a ‘tragic frontier experience’ and what the rest of us would call being bloody confused. We just don’t know which way to turn. The cognoscenti in England – the university-educated middle classes who speak French, pronounce chorizo with a th-sound, read the Herald Tribune newspaper on the train so everybody notices how unusually clever they are, have dinner parties and listen to Philip Glass – like to think that they’re above it all. Trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins and dressing up like Satan is for kids; and, moreover, it’s for kids called Wayne and Tanisha who live on council housing estates in the north. It’s not our sort of thing at all, of course. We’re all far too intelligent for behaving like that. 

I was more than a little surprised, then, to see my girlfriend (university-educated, professional, pronounces chorizo with a th etc.) leave for work this morning dressed as a witch. Moreover, she was taking my old college tie, scarf and academic gown to lend to a colleague who was intending to spend the day dressed as Harry Potter. Apparently her colleagues are all dressing up for Halloween. Why, I don’t really know. Apparently, it’s ‘ironic’; they don’t actually attach any significance to it. It’s just a bit of ‘ironic’ fun. Really? It’s one step from this to parading up and down through well-heeled neighbourhoods in the provinces with a hollwed-out pumpkin on your head catapulting eggs at people’s heads. I was not thanked for pointing this out to her as she left. For that matter, I was also not thanked for failing to notice anything unusual in that she was dressed as a witch.