
Guy Fawkes night’s oddest traditions are due to a 1606 law (2014) - pepys
https://theconversation.com/guy-fawkes-nights-oddest-traditions-are-due-to-a-1606-law-33750
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jv22222
Bonfire night in the UK is a very communal event with thousands of people
gathering together in public parks to watch the spectacle of the bonfire and
fireworks.

It feels quite harmonious, even though it is a celebration of murdeous
treachery with loud explosions and hot burning fire.

~~~
dmurray
Isn't it a celebration of the government foiling a religiously motivated
terrorist plot, thanks to superior intelligence gathering and the torture of
some of the conspirators, and subsequently used as an excuse to grant the
government more powers to crack down on the religious group? That seems like
the kind of thing the people could get behind today.

~~~
olivermarks
[https://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/guy-
fawkes-...](https://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/guy-fawkes-the-
gunpowder-plot-and-how-false-flag-operations-have-shaped-history/)

A good read for paranoid types comparing the gunpowder 'plot' to September 11
2001 in the USA and resulting crackdowns...

'Fawkes was not apprehended in a basement room but rather a ground floor room,
one remarkably easily rented by the plotters. There was, accordingly, no
tunnel. The authorship of the letter by which the King learned of the plot is
murky. It was turned over to the King by the Royal Chancellor, Sir Robert
Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury.

Sir Cecil I would characterize as the Dick Cheney of his day....' etc etc

~~~
walshemj
The Cecils where the equivalent of the DCI or the heads of MI5 and MI6 - the
BBC has a series on them currently airing

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olivermarks
Thanks, I'll have to find that

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olivermarks
watching first episode, are the commentators actors or people who have
specialized in this? somewhat odd format...also dark/deep state parallels are
interesting...

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callumlocke
I've been to Bonfire Night parties all over England. In my experience, some
people are vaguely aware of the anti-Catholic history, but it has nothing to
do with that today. Guy Fawkes is now a kind of folk hero and Bonfire Night
has morphed into a lighthearted celebration of him, if anything. It's really
just an excuse to have fireworks, and big public nighttime gatherings.

~~~
jamiethompson
This is largely true. For the most part, for most people, if they're aware of
the story behind Guy Fawkes at all it's limited to him being "Some guy that
tried to blow up the houses of parliament".

I mean, sure. He allegedly was involved in such a plot, but that's far from
the whole story.

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auxbuss
"allegedly involved"? He was caught bang to rights guarding the explosives
under the House of Lords.

The recent BBC 3-part series about it is a good potted history
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05j1bc9](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05j1bc9)
It also stars Jon Snow from Game of Thrones (Kit Harington). Spoiler: He dies
again!

~~~
nicky0
Naughty spoilers dude, that's not cool.

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aidos
I attended the Brockham bonfire last night (pictured in the article) and was
really quite something.

Over the last couple of months there's been a lot of communal work to build
the biggest bonfire I've ever seen - I believe it's the largest in the
country. The fireworks themselves were absolutely brilliant but what was
really lovely was that before hand they read out dedications to those who have
passed. It felt a lot like being at a service really.

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binarynate
There's a great, recent episode of The Allusionist podcast that details how
the word "guy" is an eponym of Guy Fawkes and provides interesting details of
this bizarre law:

[https://play.radiopublic.com/the-
allusionist-m69DWK/ep/s1!2b...](https://play.radiopublic.com/the-
allusionist-m69DWK/ep/s1!2becb3ab88c1375f8c582eedb089ca9c10430eef)

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Grazester
In my Caribbean common wealth it is still celebrated in a small village. It
has gotten massive compared to years of yore. I don't think many of the people
even know why it is celebrated.

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memracom
In British Columbia, the westernmost province of Canada, the bonfire night
celebration has been grafted onto Halloween instead, and the evening of
October 31st is filled with the same echoing of explosions and fireworks that
you would experience in a city in England on Nov 5th.

~~~
Wildgoose
Bonfire Night was traditionally held on Halloween, but delayed until November
5th while they caught the remaining plotters. It then continued on November
5th in subsequent years, so British Columbia is actually holding the
celebrations on the traditional night.

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mathw
Last week's episode of the BBC Radio 4 series "The Kitchen Cabinet" talked
about food around Bonfire Night, with the food historian on the panel
discussing how the food's always been melded a lot with the food of Halloween,
but discussing how various food items (such as toffee apples) did become more
prominent "once the persecution of Catholics became a less significant part of
the celebrations".

Because really that's what it was all about to start with - persecuting,
marginalising and generally being unpleasant to Catholics.

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gerdesj
The Ottery St Mary tar barrelling is well worth watching. I'll never forget
the sight of a bunch of people generally dressed in leather, beards and hair
nearly ablaze but generally charred rolling the barrel. Sometimes you'd get a
complete nutter fuelled on beer or cider and sheer adrenaline pick the thing
up, put in on their shoulders and run down the street until they had quite
severe burns or ran out of steam and thrown it on.

The neighbours are a bit odd (er than me) around here ...

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callumlocke
'Sometimes' they pick it up? No, every single tar barrel is picked up and
carried overhead while running through a crowd.

Pictures and footage from last night: [http://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-
news/tens-thousands-enjo...](http://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/tens-
thousands-enjoy-ottery-st-729883)

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Pxtl
As a Canadian and a fan of Alan Moore, I'm only dimly aware of Guy Fawkes
night - I had no idea of the scale of it, nor its anti-Catholic history.

Honestly, with so much bad history between Catholics and Protestants in the
British isles, this seems like the kind of thing that belongs on the dustbin
of history.

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fencepost
My immediate thought on looking at the article and its opening picture was
"Wow that so wouldn't fly in the USA these days."

I do find myself curious - did the Ku Klux Klan in the USA (first half of the
20th century) adopt burning crosses because of their anti-Catholic stance
along with everything else they were against?

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lostboys67
A lot of the initial KKK where Scottish protestant immigrants

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gadders
The BBC has just done a remake of the Guy Fawkes story starring Kit Harrington
which is pretty good:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05j1bc9](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05j1bc9)

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nicky0
I don't think a drama about a historical event is called a "remake" :)

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gadders
Re-interpretation? :-)

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nicky0
I'd go with dramatisation.

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zeristor
They may no longer be anti-Catholic but are they carbon neutral?

The times they are a changing.

