Guy Fawkes' Night

As a child, my favourite part of Guy Fawkes' Night was probably the gingerbread men. They had to be eaten in a particular way, naturally. You bit the arms and legs off first. Then you munched through the torso until all you had left was a decapitated head. This would be consumed with painstaking care, ideally the eyes left till the very last.

Nowadays my favourite part is explaining the festival to foreigners. "Fawkes," I say, "Was a Catholic who tried to blow up King James and his parliament. He was caught, and he and his accomplices were executed in an especially gruesome fashion. So now every year we make effigies of him, throw him on a bonfire and watch the fucker burn. Then we let off fireworks in celebration. And we let all the kiddies watch." If my audience doesn't look suitably horrified, I go on to tell them about the gingerbread men.

Every year there are protests about Guy Fawkes' Night. Especially in York, where Fawkes was born and raised. Local voices are always calling for him to be shown more respect, unabashed that our second most famous son was a rather dim wannabee mass murderer. (Our most famous, the Emperor Constantine, did actually manage to kill a lot of people though was considerably brighter.) I suppose these have some validity. In these religiously sensitive times, it's not good to be ceremonially burning a prominent Catholic. Though things have improved slightly; originally the effigies were of the Pope rather than Fawkes.

But the night isn't really about the thwarting of some remote, half-baked Catholic plot. That's just become the modern peg for an older urge; just as the birth of Jesus and the switch of calendars are to some extent for Christmas and New Year. Guy Fawkes' Night is about defying the season. The nights are encroaching, the chill is mounting. For one evening we like to build great beacons against the darkness. And against the creatures once thought to lurk there. It's probably no coincidence that Guy Fawkes' Night lies close to the older festival of Halloween. The ghosts who emerge are supposed to be vanquished by All Saints Day the following morning. Just in case any aren't, however, here's a barrage of bangers and rockets to scare them off.

Most countries have a night when they let off a barrel load of fireworks. The British may have chosen an especially perverse excuse for ours. But it's really no odder than the Americans or the French letting off their fireworks in the middle of summer, when they need them least of all.