>This is an alien tradition in England, but one which seems to have become popular in the past decade partly as a result of the film ET, which featured it.

I think we discussed this last year, or the one before. I'm always suprised when people from the UK say that it is not traditional to celebrate Halloween. I have done so for as long as I can remember (and that was a good twenty years before ET) although I do accept that it was more of a local tradition (in my part of Lancashire) and that friends from the South didn't seem to share the enthusiasm. In Scotland it is called guizing - see here for a mention of guizing taking place in the 19th Century http://www.fetlar.com/daily_life_in_fetlar.htm