Guy Fawkes, Bonfire Night and Halloween
We seem to have gone head over heels for the American Halloween and dumped poor Guy Fawkes. What is that about?
Is it more creeping Americanisation as we head to become another off-shore State?
Or is it merely the culmination of another commercial opportunity?
When I was a lad we didn’t have Halloween at all. We had Firework night on November 5th. That was it. We made Guys, (effigies of Guy Fawkes) put them in pushchairs and took them round the streets with the cry ‘Penny for the Guy’. Out of the donations we bought bangers. In the evening on the 5th we had a bonfire and threw our Guy on it and let off fireworks.
It was all very British. We were celebrating the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament and James 1st.
The plot was organised by a group of Catholics who were suffering enormous religious persecution at that time. The Protestant Theocracy was torturing Catholics hideously – killing them by burning, evisceration, pressing with weights and hanging. A group of Catholics led by Robert Cateby, with John Wright, Thomas Wintour, Thomas Percy, Guy Fawkes, Robert Keyes, Thomas Bates, Robert Wintour, Christopher Wright, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby and Francis Tresham planned a revolution. It was to start by blowing up the Houses of Parliament with James 1st on November the 5th. They smuggled in 36 barrels of gunpowder to do the job. Interestingly Thomas Percy, thought to be the brains behind the operation, was an alumnus of my school.
I have a lot of sympathy with the Catholics who were suffering such terrible repression.
Guy Fawkes was discovered and they were all either shot or captured, horribly tortured and hung, drawn and quartered.
Every year since 1605, four hundred and twelve years this year, we have celebrated the gunpowder plot. I’m not certain if we are celebrating the fact that it failed or that someone at least had the guts to try blowing the bastards up.
Halloween, on the other hand, was a pagan harvest festival that was adopted by Christians. It had Celtic roots and was transported out to America where it flourished. The pagan tradition can be clearly seen with its Jack-o-Lantern, witches, ghouls, and other pagan embellishments. I always wonder why Christian Americans are so enthused with pagan themes.
Anyway it seems we have reimported it big time and trick and treat is replacing blowing things up.
Ho hum.
Well if fit’s any comfort to you, Halloween seems to be on its way out here. Bran was telling me retailers didn’t purchase a lot of Halloween stock this year because so much of it had to be sent back or defected the last few years. We normally hand out candy, but we probably didn’t have 6 kids. So we went over to see our grandkids all decked out. When we came home about 8:00 there were virtually no porch lights on in our neighborhood. The weird thing about Halloween? NO ONE celebrates it with such gusto as ADULTS IN UTAH! I did you not! There are orange lights hung all over outside, house-sized spiders, etc… I just have to shake my head. Our kids never really got into it.
As to the pagan thing, there’s a strong feeling here that “Christianity” as a word is on its way out. People seem to have stopped looking for a shallow “experience” (like please entertain me) in worship. Suddenly they want something of substance to have faith in and they are looking back to the roots of their religions. I keep wondering how much the millennials are shaping what is coming out of the churches. They are NOT satisfied with the same old pat answers — thank God. We may be getting closer to you than you think. The movement is being referred to as The Emerging Church. Many changes, Opher.
Thanks for that insight from over there Cheryl. It is funny how things have their cycles isn’t it?
It is interesting to hear what is happening to the church.
I always wondered about Guy Fawkes Day – thanks, Opher, for filling me in. The good thing about the drift toward Halloween is that firecrackers aren’t part of the celebration – to the relief of combat veterans and dogs.
As to the “pagan” links for Halloween here in the used-to-be-good ole’ USA — only practicing Wiccans have rituals directly related to the pagan past, for the most part, which aren’t as scary as they seem (AT ALL – dig deeper and you’ll find that most covens are made up of well-intended, positive and loving folks).
I think the majority of Americans have little to no idea of Halloween’s history – kids just want to carve the pumpkins, get dressed up in scary costumes (and others), wander neighborhoods into the night rather than being expected home shortly after dark, and collect more candy than most of their parents will let them eat. 🙂 Their parents recall the fun they had as kids, at a kinder, gentler time, and keep it going, generation after generation.
I have friends who make a bigger deal of Halloween than Christmas — everything but the gifts. I went to a party just this year that even included several authentic full-sized coffins (funeral biz in the family). Other than the pervasive theme, costumes, amazing decorations and orange-colored lights everywhere, it was like any other cocktail party I have ever attended.
Most merchants love any excuse to sell anything they otherwise might not, of course – so they invent all kinds of tales and “must haves” to sell the oddest of things, and every kind of candy you can think of is packaged with a picture of something Halloween-themed (or wrapped in orange or black). The next day might as well be Candy Sale Day!
xx,
mgh
(Madelyn Griffith-Haynie – ADDandSoMuchMORE dot com)
ADD/EFD Coach Training Field founder; ADD Coaching co-founder
“It takes a village to educate a world!”
The old pagan religions were more in tune with nature and the changing seasons. Most of the UK was covered in woodland with wild animals like bears and wolves. They were scary, dark and creepy. I was reading a book about how the whole fears of the little people, gnomes, trolls, fairies and pixies came about. The imagination works wonders when there’s no telly, company, lights or other houses near – just you, in the dark, in the midst of creaking woods and your own imagination.