Today is Guy Fawkes Day (or Night) in merry old England, a holiday that is unapologetically nationalist, monarchist (in the best English tradition of that form of government) and Protestant Christian. There’s something fun and refreshingly patriotic about a holiday dedicated to burning a treacherous Papist in effigy. Not to make everything about America, but it smacks of the Fourth of July, albeit without the anti-monarchist undertones.
Most Americans will be familiar with Guy Fawkes Day and the iconic mask from the film V for Vendetta (2005), in which the meaning of Guy Fawkes focuses on the man’s role as a would-be freedom fighter for English Catholics against an oppressive Protestant regime. In the context of the film, the titular V dons the mask in the context of a freedom fighter against a fascistic, quasi-religious British government.
The holiday has been stripped of much of its anti-Catholic sentiment (probably for the better) and patriotic overtones (probably for the worse), and apparently it’s mostly called “Bonfire Night” or “Fireworks Night.” Those appellations may appeal to twenty-first-century sensibilities, but they beg the essential question: why are the English lighting bonfires and shooting off fireworks? I suppose we could do those things “just because” (believe me, I love a good bonfire in late autumn), but it feels like the root of the celebration is lost. It also seems that the holiday could be celebratory for preventing the regicide of King James I (the guy behind the King James Version of the Bible) while downplaying the anti-Catholic sentiment that followed the failed 1605 plot.
But I digress. I decided to commemorate the holiday this year with a melodramatic recitation of the first five lines of the famous poem about the failed plot:
Happy Guy Fawkes Day—or Night!
—TPP