About this day

Halloween started life as the Celtic festival of Samhain, marking the end of harvest and the beginning of winter. The veil between worlds is supposed to be thin. The dark gets long. The candle inside the pumpkin is doing exactly what candles have always done at this time of year, keeping the cold and the dark a polite step away from the door.

The Happy Ber Months take on Halloween is gentle. Less scream, more flicker. A ghost story by candlelight is more our speed than a haunted-house screamfest, but you do you. Either way, this is peak autumn cosy: a carved pumpkin in the window, the door open for whoever knocks, the heating on for the first time, and something hot in a mug.

Why we love it

It is the first proper warning shot from winter. The clocks have changed, the evenings are dark by half five, and the whole country quietly agrees that staying in is now the correct answer.