Bonfire Night

I know in the States we have some unique holidays...4th of July, Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, etc., but tonight we took part in a British holiday celebrated for hundreds of years called Bonfire Night. To an outsider looking in, you probably think it's a cool sounding fall holiday to have bonfires out in your garden (yard), shoot off some fireworks, and get together with friends, and I bet you didn't know that Bonfire Night is actually more popular in the UK than Halloween is. Well let me tell you a little bit of history about Bonfire Night which is actually its on November 5th, but is celebrated through out the whole weekend before.

Hundreds of years ago there was a plot to kill King James I by a conspirator, Guy Fawkes, who loaded up the cellar below the House of Lords in Parliment with barrels of gun powder. An insider leaked out the secret to a friend and the king found out about it, so they found Guy and they took him to the Tower of London and tortured him horribly - hung him until he was almost dead, put him on the racks and stretched him out, then quartered him and hung his parts all around London to warn others against attempting plots to assasinate the king. Today they celebrate the fact that the king was saved by burning huge bonfires with effigies (stuffed fake bodies) of Guy Fawkes as a reminder of how he was tortured and shoot off fireworks to remember the failed blowing up of the king. It's quite an interesting story for parents to explain to their children. "Why mummy are they throwing a man on the fire?" Their response, "Because he was very, very naughty."

Well on Saturday nighat around 5:30PM we walked to the neighboring village in the dark carrying our torches (flashlights) to a huge bonfire and then fireworks at 6:30 (that's a lot earlier in the evening to watch fireworks than in the summer in the States). We ran into quite a few people we knew from our own village, so it was to see familiar faces in a nice gathering of a few hundred people. It is truly amazing on how we feel like a part of our community when we've only been here for three months.