For a little while when my children were very young, we could pretend Halloween wasn't happening.

On the night of the event we could hear children outside talking, howling, screaming "trick or treat!" and we smiled to ourselves but didn't feel the need to participate as a family.

The most we would do some years was place a bowl of sweets outside our front door so no trick or treater coming up the path to our house would leave empty-handed.

And then my daughter started school.

Halloween, as I found out, was a ritual most school kids threw themselves into. My daughter would spend lunchtime discussing with her friends what outfits they would wear to go trick or treating.

It became An Event and we quickly had to educate ourselves about which streets in our neighbourhood to visit and which houses had the best decorations.

There was no going back to pretending it wasn't happening.

Saman Shad dressed up as Rosie the Riveter for a Halloween party this year. ( Supplied )

It's become a big deal

I'm not unusual in not initially getting into the spirit of Halloween.

I didn't grow up with it and the idea of dressing up to go knocking on strangers doors for sweets didn't really sound appealing.

But then when I was a child, Halloween wasn't as big a deal in Australia as it is now. It seems every year this adopted American celebration is getting bigger and many people don't like it.

The thing that Halloween detractors always point to is that it's too American. We shouldn't be celebrating it in Australia.

Parents can join in the fun too. ( ABC News: Jonathan Hair )

But guess what, lots of things are American. Most of the movies we watch, the celebrities we worship, the musicians we listen to — in fact much of our popular culture is American. Our fashion is greatly inspired by what is happening in America. Our TV screens are filled with American shows.

There's no getting away from it.

'A funny thing happened'

So I relented to my kids wishes and took them trick or treating.

They wore their costumes and skipped down the street while I tagged along behind. And then a funny thing happened.

Is this just American capitalism exploiting our children? ( ABC News: Jonathan Hair )

I started to speak to a lot of the neighbours on my street who I had never spoken to before. We met parents from my son's preschool.

We met a number of my daughter's classmates. We chatted about the neighbourhood and promised to arrange playdates. My neighbourhood suddenly started to feel a lot friendlier.

I began to realise the great things about Halloween is it's one of the few celebrations where you get to meet the people living around you.

In fact, name me another celebration where you are encouraged to knock on your neighbour's door and actually talk to them.

Even if the only thing you say is trick or treat, it is more than many say to the people living next door to them all year.

'My attitude began to change'

Halloween is the only celebration where communities and neighbourhoods are encouraged to come together, mostly for the benefit of children.

And perhaps this is at the core of why some people dislike Halloween — because in Australia at least, it's a celebration focused around children.

It encourages children to be their noisy, creative selves. It encourages them to take up space when in many of our cities children are actively shunned.

We see groups of children screaming, laughing, talking when often in the evenings in many of our streets we don't hear them at all. And it was when I started to realise this, my attitude to Halloween began to change.

Adults should dress up too and join the kids. ( Facebook )

If anything, it would be better if more adults got into the spirit of the event.

I'm not saying groups of adults should walk down the street trick or treating. But it certainly wouldn't hurt if you offered lollies to any errant trick or treaters — for most know the unwritten rule that only houses with decorations should be knocked on.

And while we are at it, can our offices have Halloween parties rather than the boozy Melbourne Cup lunches that are the norm? At least there will be no animals harmed in those celebrations.

Whether you like it or not, Halloween is here to stay.

So you may as well join in the fun, if nothing else so you finally get to meet the people who live on your street.

You maybe surprised at the friends that you end up making.