Not Christmas, but Halloween. Britain’s witches this week complained that the feast - the high point of their year - has been corrupted by the American tradition of “trick or treat” and ignored by schools desperate not to offend Christian parents.

Witches describe their faith as “a path of magic and love... a sharing and joining with the mysteries of Nature and the Old Gods”. They believe in practising “natural magic” to achieve “practical ends by psychic means, for good, useful and healing purposes”. Halloween, or Samhain as the Celts called it, is the most important of the eight ancient celebrations or sabbats in the turning wheel of the Wiccan year.

It’s the time of year when the veil between the worlds of the living and dead is thinnest, and witches, druids and other followers of pre-Christian religions remember the dead and look to the future.

“October 31 Samhain is a bit like Christmas and New Year rolled into one,” says Andy Norfolk of the Pagan Federation, half of whose 5,000 members are witches. “And, like Christians at Christmas, we look at Halloween and are rather saddened. It has lost any spiritual significance it had.”

The arriving Christians took Samhain and turned it into All Hallow’s Eve or Halloween, when they too remember dead saints. Ironically, many Christians now object to the witchcraft associated with the feast and some even ask schools to ban it.

But this is not a clash of religions. Witches and other pagans say everyone should be free to follow their own spiritual path. It’s the tacky horror show that upsets them.

Modern witches are a peaceful lot.