Experts say the tide has turned in Australia, and the controversial celebration is here to stay. Loading It's certainly a fixture in the calendar of Melbourne mother Melissa Lyon, who will be trick or treating on Wednesday with her daughter Eve, Eve's friend Scarlett and her nephew Tom. Ms Lyon said the popularity of Halloween had skyrocketed in her suburb of Elsternwick, in Melbourne's south-east, with every third or fourth house sporting spooky decorations. "When I was growing up it was never something we celebrated. Only since my kids have celebrated it, we got involved as well. It's getting increasingly more popular with younger kids year on year," she said.

"From my point of view, if the kids are having fun in terms of dressing up, playing different characters and laughing and enjoying themselves, then there's good in that. "Walking around, meeting your neighbours is something that is not done these days... the face-to-face conversation opportunity is really great." As American culture expert Rodney Taveira says: "Once it starts, it's hard to stop." Dr Taveira from the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, said Australian children have been influenced by American TV depicting the festival. "People who were children and tweens doing it 10 years ago have started to become young adults going to Halloween themed nights at bars and parties. So in that way it's established as a tradition and once that has been established people follow through," Dr Taveira said.

"Also, retailers are using it more to market Halloween focused materials and goods." Halloween, a shortening of the original term All Hallows' Evening, traditionally preceded the Catholic Church's celebration of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day on November 1 and 2. The origin of the festival dates even further back, from an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain, which celebrated the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darker half". Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine in the mid-1800s brought the celebration to the US, bringing with them folk customs such as creating jack-o-lanterns.

And, as it gradually cemented a place in Australia, the debate began about whether it was a celebration that belonged here. Dr Taveira says the division here can be attributed in part to Australia's history as a colonial country, which has traditional ties to Britain, rather than the US. "We are a Commonwealth country and so much of our culture up until the last 20 years, really particularly our televisual culture, has come from the UK," he said.

"As younger Australians have increasingly looked to the US for entertainment in particular, the focus on England isn't really there. Loading "There is resistance from older people, resisting this Americanisation of Australia. They have no hope, I think, in resisting it and I think picking Halloween [to fight] is strange because so much of the discourse around young people is they are stuck behind computers - here we have kids, tweens and young adults getting together, face to face, and out in the community. I'd pick something else to fight." Marketing and consumer behaviour expert Dr Paul Harrison from Deakin University says issues around celebrating Halloween in Australia exist, but are being eroded as a new generation adopts it.

"There is this binary view of Australia and American culture, we focus on this thing and start hating it a lot because of that... I think you just have to let it go. If people enjoy doing it, what's the problem," he says. This year, the growth in Halloween's popularity has been reflected in the consumer trends, with supermarkets such as Woolworths expecting a 20 per cent rise in pumpkin sales. The supermarket giant has even spent the past decade developing and testing methods to be able to grow pumpkins big enough to celebrate Halloween in Australia. Dr Harrison says as the popularity of Halloween grows, it will be important to resist the commercialisation of a festival that can have more historic and meaningful traditions. "The problem I see is when we get to the point where people believe by doing a festival, you have to buy things. You can celebrate Halloween, you can celebrate Valentine's Day, any cultural festival, but you don't have to be part of the capitalist celebration of it," he says.

"My advice as a consumer behaviour expert and knowing about psychology is take what you need to make you happy, don't get caught up around the obligations of buying stuff." Geoff Brailey, social researcher for McCrindle, says Halloween isn't the only American tradition gaining traction in Australia. "We're also seeing more people start to celebrate Thanksgiving," he said. "Australians really relish in the idea of gathering as a community or sharing a meal together."