Over lunch today, Pete and I were pondering on the origins of Bonfire Night, and realised that, in the current political climate, it feels very wrong to be celebrating the putting down of a rebellion against a corrupt government.
But in the same spirit of hypocrisy with which I enjoy christmas, we are going to join in the torchlight procession and watch the fireworks tonight.
November 6, 2004
Why we should all boycott Bonfire Night
We’ve had three claims so far this morning for “rocket damage to our flat roof”.
This isn’t Baghdad, gentlemen!
I still prefer to think of Guy Fawkes as “the last person to go into Parliament with honest intent”
I agree with Lyle. I celebrate Bonfire night not because he failed, but because he tried.
Agreed- in NZ, Guy Fawkes was celebrated as a hero. It wasn’t until I got to the UK that people said they were celebrating the FAILURE of the gunpowder plot. I was like: “Wha? You got it all backwards!”
I think that celebrating Guy Fawkes night is quite fitting in this day and age and any other – celebrating the defeat of a group of terrorists who were trying to further their ends by bombing a country’s parliament seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
So we’ll leave the group of terrorists currently in control of our country’s parliament unmollested to further their own ends…
I think the real tragedy of the gunpowder plot was that they threw Guy’s wife, Knifen, on to the fire as well.