Do I need a reason?

Mr. Kupfer was right, you know. I do love a good joke, and this is the best ever: a joke on the children. But there's a better reason. You don't really know much about Halloween. You thought no further than the strange custom of having your children wear masks and go out begging for candy.

It was the start of the year in our old Celtic lands, and we'd be waiting in our houses of wattles and clay. The barriers would be down, you see, between the real and the unreal, and the dead might be looking in to sit by our fires of turf.

Halloween... the festival of Samhain! The last great one took place three thousand years ago, when the hills ran red with the blood of animals and children.