For generations (the last 400 years in fact), English families have taught the rhyme to their children “Remember, Remember, the 5th of November”. The rest of the world has little or no idea that this marker in history exists, and given that I know many people from far flung places read my blog, I thought perhaps a post about this was timely.
So what is significant about 5th November? Wikipedia tells us the following;
Guy Fawkes, also known as Guido Fawkes; the name he adopted while fighting for the Spanish in the Low Countries, belonged to a group of Roman Catholic restorationists from England who planned the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Their aim was to displace Protestant rule by blowing up the Houses of Parliament while King James I and the entire Protestant, and even most of the Catholic, aristocracy and nobility were inside. The conspirators saw this as a necessary reaction to the systematic discrimination against English Catholics.
The Gunpowder Plot was led by Robert Catesby, but Fawkes was put in charge of its execution. He was arrested a few hours before the planned explosion, during a search of the cellars underneath Parliament in the early hours of 5 November prompted by the receipt of an anonymous warning letter.
Guy Fawkes Night (or Bonfire Night), held on 5 November in the United Kingdom and some parts of the Commonwealth, is a commemoration of the plot, during which an effigy of Fawkes is burned, often accompanied by a fireworks display. The word “guy”, meaning “man” or “person”, is derived from his name.
In modern times, the evening is marked by visiting bonfires and firework displays up and down the country (or having your own - more on this later). The celebration has also become skewed somewhat - nobody really knows any more if we are celebrating the fact that Fawkes nearly got away with it, or that he was caught.
We are incredibly lucky to live next to a school that stages the most impressive bonfire and firework display for miles around, so shepherded the children out at their normal bedtime to stand in a cold, rainy field for a couple of hours along with hundreds of other parents and children. The conditions were of course repaid when the show started, and the various choruses of “oOOOoooo”, “aaaaAAAAaaa”, and “BLOODY HELL!” rang out.
As I said - many families choose to buy their own fireworks, and have their own bonfires (its a great excuse to get rid of rubbish - turning it into ash that will be deposited across neighbouring gardens). It’s the only night in the year in UK law when a person in the street can light fireworks - which are not so different to high explosives really. They are incredibly expensive, incredibly dangerous, and I can’t quite understand why people would bother; spending a huge chunk of money on a few crappy bangs in your back garden doesn’t really compare to several hundred people pooling resources (at a school display) to both help fund the school, and have a professionally built display with huge fireworks that you or I are not allowed to buy.
Anyway. Our kids were suitably excited about the entire evening. They cheered, they jumped up and down, and were probably the loudest on the entire field most of the time. We bumped into friends, stamped our feet against the cold together, and actually had a really great evening.
I would tend to celebrate that Guido Fawkes nearly got away with it of course - but then if he had, the world might be a very different place - and you or I probably wouldn’t exist (chaos theory being what it is).
Interesting note - the mask of the character in V for Vendetta is modelled on Guy Fawkes, as is the underlying plot of the story