As someone originally from England, I have to say that costume parties for Halloween, and also the telling of ghost stories, go back a long way over there. These things were fairly common more than a decade before I emigrated to the US, and I've been over here for more than twenty years, so we're talking more than thirty years ago. We even had jack-o-lanterns back in those days, albeit made from turnips, not pumpkins. It is only trick-or-treat that is an American import.

I am sorry to have to point it out, but those Brits who say that there was never any celebration of Halloween there before trick-or-treating started must have been living under a rock. I think even the American trick-or-treat thing itself has been going on for at least a decade over there, to some extent.

Of course, it is really the pagan Samhain, which the church co-opted as All Hallow's Eve, and this most certainly did not begin in America either! I read the comment about no religion on the board, but you can't get around it being a religious holiday.