The trouble with Guy Fawkes night
My reaction to fireworks is a bit eccentric. Lovely, I think, but can’t they be more meaningful? To be more precise, this is my view of Bonfire Night, formerly known as Guy Fawkes night. It would be nice, I think, if we could revive the annual event as a celebration of our shared values. To be fair, it retains a faint gunpowdery whiff of this. Most Britons are aware that we are celebrating a historic victory over terrorism. But the awareness is fading.
Ideally, Guy Fawkes would have belonged to some obscure sect that is now safely defunct
The main problem with trying to revive the meaningfulness of this festival is that it is linked to anti-Catholic bigotry. Ideally, Guy Fawkes would have belonged to some obscure sect that is now safely defunct. Then we could all innocently burn him in effigy, for he would be a mere symbol of terrorism.
Another problem with trying to re-inject meaning into Guy Fawkes is that 1605 is pretty far in the past.
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