To an older generation of Brit – the ones who can’t bear Halloween because it’s “an American import”, who have no time for pound shop orange and spider-themed tat, and who won’t do trick or treat because its “glorified begging” – 5 November is “Guy Fawkes Night”.
Or Bonfire Night… or Fireworks Night. Whatever you call it, it’s far superior to 31 October in almost every respect.
So it is a shame that the foiled attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament more than 400 years ago is now so outshone by Halloween that the public firework displays we once enjoyed have been left, like Guy Fawkes, to go hang.
Those of us whose childhoods were filled with chants of “Remember, remember/The fifth of November/Gunpowder, treason and plot” are the lucky ones. In these days of swingeing council budget cuts, 5 November is fast becoming No-Fireworks Night.
For the first time in 25 years, Worthing Pier’s firework display has been scrapped; ditto Manchester’s Heaton Park display and Sheffield’s Manor Fields Park show. The annual “Big Bang” in Pontypridd has been called off due to flooding. What was once “London’s biggest free fireworks display”, on Blackheath, has been binned for the fifth year in a row.
We can’t all make it down to Lewes for its famous effigy-burning parade through the streets – which, given the expected crush and after a warning from local police, is just as well.
This is a massive shame, as Bonfire Night is one of the very few festive events that we can make a proper community event. When I was kid, we took our own fireworks to a local open space where a big bonfire had been made, and we enjoyed everyone else’s sparklers and spluttering catherine wheels as well as our own. We then moved on to the thrill of a big firework display, which I still think is the best way to see them – everyone ooh-ing and aah-ing at the spectacle and then trailing off home, the smell of gunpowder lingering in the air.
Thanks to drone technology, we may not have the full Fireworks Night sensory experience for much longer. Instead, the future may be thousands of lit-up drones massing to create a hovering image of Dua Lipa or Peppa Pig for our autumnal entertainment. The sight is certainly impressive, but almost entirely soulless; there’s not a lot of magic in watching what’s essentially a load of tightly choreographed flashing lights.
The wonderful thing about Guy Fawkes/Bonfire/Fireworks Night was that it was a bit homemade and shonky. It also fills our primeval desire to sit around a fire during the darkest periods of the year, be with others and share stories, soup and baked potatoes. We are in the midst of a loneliness epidemic, so surely any excuse to get together with 20 or 2,000 others and enjoy a bit of shared experience and human contact has to be a good thing – especially when you’re watching something that never loses its thrill no matter how old you are, and with displays handmade by actual people, not algorithms.
So if you’re lucky enough to have a council-run display near you – even if you do have to fork out a few quid for it – this weekend, you really should put on your woolly hat and get out into the chilly night with your nearest and dearest. It will warm your heart in every way.
