Is it just ME?

Or is Halloween now impossible to escape?

IT’S BAD enough that Christmas starts creeping into early autumn. Now, another festival refuses to know its place. October has officially become Halloween season, a month-long festival of orange tat, plastic ghouls and all-round tackiness.

Halloween used to be a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it affair. There was the odd pumpkin, a bit of trick-ortreating, a Hollywood horror at the flicks. Somehow, we’ve come over all American. For weeks, the shops have been groaning with novelty skeleton onesies and plastic spiders. It’s become a major part of the British calendar.

Supermarkets, scenting money in the macabre, fall over themselves to push junk in our faces.

Eyeball cupcakes? Spiderweb placemats?

There are Halloween parties at which grown women wear leotards with

For weeks now, the shops have been full of tat. Let’s keep it to fright night — not fright month

cat’s ears and feather boa tails. There’s trick- ortreating for Augustus Gloop-like children who clamour for E-numbers.

And there is a new horror — the Halloween Tree. Yes, the Latest Thing is to erect a Christmas tree in early October and cover it with mini-skulls.

This weeks-long carnival isn’t just an assault on the wallet, but the eyeballs, too. Instead of the tasteful pastels of Easter and the jewel colours of Christmas we have violent orange, neon green and black.

All festooned with white candyfloss stuff that is meant to look like witches’ hair or Satan’s navel fluff.

But underneath all the commercialism lies something disturbing about this festival of the grotesque.

I know some people love the spooky stuff, and I don’t begrudge them their fun. But less is more. Let’s keep it to fright night — not fright month. We need some time off between holiday seasons, after all.