There are few cultural differences between America and Britain as great as Hallowe'en. When Americans think of it, they think of small costumed children waddling door-to-door with their fondly smiling parents, collecting sweets as they go. When the British think of Hallowe'en, they think of glum teenagers, demanding money for cigarettes and porn mags, in return for which they will not vandalise your car or disembowel your cat.

Not that trick-or-treating has always been so accepted in America. When the practice first began in the 1930s, upstanding citizens were appalled. Furious letters were written to newspapers. The Madison Square Boys Club even marched through New York with a banner that read “American Boys Don't Beg”.

But then came a 1952 Walt Disney cartoon entitled Trick or Treat and a Hallowe'en-themed Unicef campaign — and lo, one of the world's most bizarre cultural phenomena was born. These days, there is perhaps no greater act of misanthropy in middle-class America than failing to prepare a large bowl of sweets in preparation for the inevitable trick-or-treaters. Here in the company town of Hollywood, the risk of appearing mean-spirited to one's neighbours (and therefore colleagues) is even greater. Who wants to stand on their doorstep and explain to Angelina Jolie why her small band of pumpkin-toting ex-Aids-orphans don't deserve a mini-bar of Snickers?

And yet there have always been some American hold-outs. A woman in New York, for example, once dispensed steel wool and dog biscuits to children on Hallowe'en. She was promptly arrested and jailed. Shortly afterwards, an eight-year-old boy in Houston died after being given a cyanide-laced packet of Pixy Stix. It seems that while some children in Britain see Hallowe'en as an opportunity for extorting adults, some adults in America see it as an opportunity for poisoning children. Indeed, some local authorities are now offering free X-rays and swab-tests of sweets collected door-to-door.

Personally, I suspect that such “candy-tampering” tales have been deliberately overdone by American grown-ups as part of a wider agenda. It's not that they don't approve of Hallowe'en. No, quite the opposite. It's because they want all the fun for themselves. After all, adult costumes are so much funnier than children's costumes. You can hardly dress your three-year-old son in all-black and declare him to be “Dick Cheney's conscience”, for example. Children also don't get pregnant, which rules out maternity costumes, such as this year's favourite: a black underwear ensemble entitled “Fat Britney”. It will be only a matter of time before America's child-based trick-or-treating culture dies out completely, leaving Britain as its sole, awkward custodian. My evidence for this? I need only point you in the direction of the little boy killed by those Pixy Stix.

It wasn't a stranger who poisoned them, the police later found. It was the boy's own father.

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