Remember, Remember...

Monday was Guy Fawkes day. I have always known about Guy Fawkes day, but I have never really experienced it before. It is interesting how much it is still celebrated here in England, despite the increasing popularity of the imported and competing North American 'holiday', Halloween, and the fact that most of my contemporaries seem extremely fuzzy on the historical significance and details of Guy Fawkes and the Gun Powder Plot.

I am sure all of my readers are roughly familiar with the story of the Catholic rebel who tried to blow up the House of Lords on November 5, 1605. The plot was to kill King James I and replace him with a Catholic monarch. However, the plot was discovered, Fox was tried for treason, tortured and hung, drawn and quartered. Apparently, following the trial and execution, an Act of Parliament was passed to declare the 5th of November a day of celebration for the king's deliverance; this act remained until 1859. 

I believe that traditionally on Guy Fawkes day, dolls of Fawkes are burned atop blazing bonfires. However, my experience tonight did not involve any dolls. Ironically, despite the morbid and Protestant propagandist origins of the evening's celebrations, my experiences transported me back and reminded me of a bygone era when neighbours knew each other, and children played together on a village green, as parents watched out the window of the local pub, perhaps a baby on their knee, imbibing the local ale. Indeed, this was not far off from the scene I was a part of. 

Returning from a day in the Vere Hemsworth Library (Oxford's Library for American History), I joined two of my British housemates. We heated some mulled wine and filled a thermos before mounting our bikes for a cycle to the outskirts of town. Turning down dark Wolvercote Lane, we heard the voices of children and the sound of fireworks as the bright lights began to fill the sky. Cars were parked all down both sides of the narrow lane, and families were walking down towards the pub, called The Plough. Outside the pub, in a field, was a blazing bonfire, about fifteen feet high and surrounded by people of all ages. In the gardens immediately outside the pub, stations for beer, mulled wine and barbecued food were set up. Looking through the pub windows I could see families sitting at tables set out in front of book covered walls, and older men standing round the bar.

I headed towards the fire with my friends, passing a giant oak tree, hung with a rope swing and holding a child. Closer to the fire there was another tree; two boys had managed to climb almost to the top limbs before being ordered down. We gathered around the fire, drinking our mulled wine and trying to find that perfect balance between freezing from the cold fall wind, and roasting in the extreme heat of the fire's flames. People pulled out sparklers as one boy heaped old chairs and wooden rowboats on the blaze sending the flames even higher. 

The fireworks continued and the fire did not wan. However, the crowd thinned, as parents took children home to bed. I lingered by the fire with my housemates, enjoying its warmth and watching the train pass by just behind us. The conversation moved from jokes and summer plans to philosophy and theology before we headed back to our bikes, which were locked to the split-rail fence by the pub, and cycled home.