For those of you who don’t know (myself included, until a few years ago) Guy Fawkes Night (also known as Bonfire night) commemorates November 5th, 1605 when Fawkes, along with fellow religious conspirators attempted to kill King James I of England and most of the aristocracy, by blowing up the House of Lords in the Palace of Westminster. Along with other conspirators, Fawkes rented a cellar beneath the House of Lords and hid 1800 pounds of gunpowder in the cellar under piles of firewood and coal. The king got wind of this conspiracy and ordered the cellars to be searched. Fawkes was found leaving the cellar shortly before midnight and was arrested. He later died after falling off a ladder while climbing to the gallows where he was to be hanged (gruesome, eh?)
On the day the assassination plot was discovered, the people of London were encouraged to celebrate Guy Fawkes’ plan being foil, and the King’s escape, by lighting bonfires throughout the city, and that tradition has continued on every since.
Starting in the 18th century, it became a tradition for children to make an effigy of Fawkes (also called a “Guy”) and burn it on a bonfire at the end of the evening.
My brother and his friends had a blast making their own “Guy” out of old clothes, filled with newspaper and pine needles (those things really ignite!). I think his mustache was more Pringles-Can-Logo and less Guy Fawkes, but thats just me.
This is actually where the term “guy” comes from. Now it is just a reference to a man, but back then it was “a man of odd appearance”.
This November 5th round up all your British friends and have a Bonfire Night. If nothing else its an excuse to make smores, right?
