Do you think we'll celebrate bonfire night forever?

Big Jeff said:
Why on gods green earth would you buy your own fireworks. It‘s literally money going up in smoke.
Click to expand...

I guess it’s better than going out to a display If you can arrange a personal family gathering? You aren’t going miles away and you aren’t with hundreds of other people you don’t know?

I would like the idea of having a small family display and putting on hot dogs or other eats and drinks.
 


Tuono said:
Luckily for him his neck broke when they hung* him so I'm not sure if the bothered with the drawn and quartered bit.
* Is it hung or hanged?
Click to expand...
Interesting question
The answer in this case is, I believe, both.
He should have been hung, but was accidentally hanged. He was supposed to be hung (ie
not killed by hanging) before being drawn and quartered, but his neck broke instantly. Some reports say he fell from the ladder and broke his neck when hitting the ground (his body was shattered from torture) , others that the noose broke his neck instantly.
 
Linny said:
Millions spent every year, all because we murdered Guy Fawkes. 🤷
Click to expand...

Money up in smoke with fireworks during a cost of living crisis, air pollution, CO2 contributing to climate change, litter from all the fireworks, anti social behaviour, firefighters getting assaulted for doing their job, hospital admissions from people with burns putting extra pressure on the nhs, distress to animals from the fireworks.

It should be banned outright, very annoying.
 
PJH said:
Gunpowder plot wasn't about changing the political structure, just about knocking off Protestant rule to bring back Catholic rule. Hence why a warning letter telling someone to avoid going to Parliament became the undoing of the plot.
Click to expand...
So bringing us back under the rule of the Pope, and extinguishing a fledgling democracy.
Big Jeff said:
Why on gods green earth would you buy your own fireworks. It‘s literally money going up in smoke.
Click to expand...
Far more exciting setting your own off
HoxtonMackem said:
90 percent of folk who buy fireworks to set off won’t even know the history behind it, thick as mince charver types.
Click to expand...
Sounds unlikely
 
Last edited:
zinedine said:
Yes nobody celebrates Guy Fawkes it's about fireworks and fires. It's the annual excuse for idiots to get hold of explosives and set them off.
Click to expand...
If they are banned in future I wonder if people will just set fire to some money instead?
Assuming we still have cash then too...
 
It always seemed to me that the central part of the celebrations associated with Guy Fawkes Night did not have not much to do with the bloke. As everyone will know he wasn't burnt to death he was executed on a scaffold so chucking an effigy of a man on a big bonfire is an odd way to remember his dirty deeds.

If you look across Europe lots of people have bonfire & fire festivals at various times of the year. A bonfire celebration isn't unique to Britain. These days those festivals are often held (supposedly) in commemoration of one Christian Saint or another but they clearly have been going on long before Christianity or indeed Guy Fawkes came along & stole the show.

You have to ask how is it that the Guy Fawkes incident captured the public imagination so much that his death warrants commemoration even today? The defeat of the Spanish Armada had been a far greater victory over Roman Catholicism & that had taken place only 17 years before Fawkes. The Armada had presented a much a greater threat to England & it's monarch than old Guy Fawkes & his mates ever did. It had even had resulted in a "glorious" military victory at sea complete with heroes. The defeat of an attempted invasion by Spain was a much more significant event than the discovery of a half arsed plot to blow up Parliament. It's a wonder that the Gun Powder Plot wasn't lost pretty much to history as things like the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820 have been.

Then there's the question of where exactly did the idea of burning an effigy of a man/Fawkes start and why did it become an annual event that spread across the whole country?

To my mind Fawkes has simply been assimilated in to a much older probably pre-Christian bonfire tradition that you can find in other European countries. In 1605 it wouldn't have been a good idea to admit that once a year you & your mates were having a good time engaged in some sort of dodgy Pagan fire festival. Passing it off as a celebration of the deliverance of the King from his enemies & the defeat of Roman Catholic Church would have probably got you a grant from the Council.
 

Back
Top