You’d think the ad men would at least wait for the embers to die on Bonfire Night before rolling out the Christmas adverts.

We've barely shaken the summer sand from our flip-flops when Christmas has arrived in shop windows. Then comes Halloween, which now starts at least a fortnight before October 31, and you can't move for over-priced plastic tat and mass-produced costumes in dangerously synthetic fibres. Now Bonfire Night is upon us, and fireworks don't come cheap.

Commercialism is nothing new, but in recent years we have embraced America's obsession with rituals of ‘the Fall’, not least Halloween, to such an extent that it's now about as spooky and mysterious as a drive-through burger bar.

Halloween used to creep up, for one night only, and leave ghostly flickers and eerie sounds in its wake. A burning candle spitting in a carved out turnip sounded like someone whispering in the dark, and the lantern had its own crisp autumnal aroma that I still recall. As far as I can make out, pumpkins don't have a distinctive smell and still look a little out of place to me.

The costumes were home-made and that, along with a turnip glowing in the kitchen and some apple-bobbing in a washing-up bowl, was as far as it went. Now there are buffet tables creaking with a bewildering array of spook-themed finger food, not to mention the florescent confectionery filling garish plastic pumpkin baskets.

It used to be about having a lark in the street, wearing something made out of an old table-cloth, but now there's a whole industry churning out "bad taste" costumes, making it perfectly acceptable to go out dressed as a hit-and-run victim, a serial killer or a half-finished autopsy. I lost count of the "Mummy's little walking dead" pictures posted on Facebook at the weekend.

Am I alone in thinking it's all a bit much? As a child I went to bed on Halloween night feeling a bit spooked, pulling up the sheets and listening out for the faint cackle of a witch or the creak of a door. You could almost feel the shiver of lost souls floating through the mist on All Hallows' Eve.

Now it's all sanitised wackiness - brain-shaped cakes and sugar-coated zombie fingers. It's either so mass-produced it has lost any meaning, or it's just too terrifying for young children. The simple charm of a ghost story can be exciting for a child, firing their imaginations, but horror and bad taste - the living dead and walking roadkill - are inappropriate for young children, even at this time of year. I once saw a toddler leap with fright when he saw someone in a Munch's Scream mask one Halloween. I bet it's still etched on his memory.

For as long as children remain fair game when it comes to seasonal money-making, it seems the lines will become increasingly blurred between what is acceptable for them and what isn't.