Samhain

The feast we call Halloween was originally an autumn festival. Like most prehistoric festivals we don't really know what it was about. So that means we generally assume it was some kind of fertility rite. After all, they didn't have TV or Twitter in those days - early people had to make their own entertainment.

The co-incidence of the Christian feasts of All Saints and All Souls seems to have introduced, via a tortuous route, the link with death and - via Mexican traditions and Hollywood and US commercialism - produced the ghoul-fest of small children traipsing around the streets dressed as Gary Barlow and Tulisa that we know today. It's truly astonishing how mutable folkloric traditions can be.

But in keeping with our Beaker heritage, we're going to keep Samhain as a serious feast. So we're going to light a bonfire and hope it keeps the darkness away. Pumpkins, swedes and turnips carved in scary faces are allowed. As long as you light a tea light inside them. But ghouls, ghosts, pirates, mummies, giraffes (I don't want a repeat of last year) and Ricky Gervais masks are out. This is a proper celebration. And we don't want to scare the kids too much.