I recall as a kid being asked by a teacher to divide the page into 12 and pictorially represent each month. Some months were easy –February for snow, August for holidays (not any more –we have to be back at school mid-August these days), December for Christmas. I remember that the autumnal months were particularly exciting –October was for Hallowe’en with all the spooky stuff and November Guy Fakwes Night with the accompanying fireworks spectacular, AND both those days were within a week!
My dear old mum was not pleased with my artwork. “Hallowe’en is an American festival. We don’t do that one.”
I fumed and protested: the idea that a festival entirely set up for the kids, for sweets and practical joking was too good to excise on my mother’s mere patriotic say-so. But each year came and went and Hallowe’en remained unobserved: not as much as a “BOO!” as a boo-hoo! I swore that as an adult I would insist that trick-or-treating would be at least as important as Christmas gift-giving and singing stupid old carols.
As parents, Brenda and I welcomed Hallowe’en with the kids. Moving to Hong Kong made it easier to admit foreign customs (even American ones). They saw the fun side of things and made it their own –Hallowe’en’s trashy and crass and all the better for it! Embracing the darker side of life, the aspect of skulls, death and spooks reminds us all the there’s something else out there which we don’t understand and making a joke of it takes the sting out of the tail.
Actually, Hallowe’en has its origins in Ireland. As a custom, it’s perhaps no-more than two centuries old. It’s folklore is steeped in a deep Celtic past and the true origins are lost to common memory. It takes place at the beginning of winter and is associated with end of the all life of one year and heralds the beginning of another. It has been appropriated by neo-pagans as Samhain, the ancient harvest festival. The next day is All Saints Day, the day in which all saints have homage -both the living and dead. It's also our Wedding Anniversary.
Guy Fawkes was a revolutionary English Catholic who plotted to blow up the King, his family and Parliament in the old Palace of Westminster. Dramatically discovered at the last moment on 5th November, he was gruesomely tortured and confessed to all. Had he succeeded, England would almost certainly have reverted to the old faith and the history of the British Isles and beyond would have been very different.
The celebration of the capture of the traitor Guy Fawkes has always been widely celebrated in England. His effigy has been made into ‘guys’ thereon. His gunpowder treason has never been forgotten and has been a reminder of Popish plots to undermine the Crown or The English Way. Indeed, an Act of Parliament made the celebration of November 5th an official holiday and was held thus until 1859. The guy is ceremoniously placed on the very top of the bonfire, his burned form captivating children and adults alike.
It is unlikely many of us English burn our guys with an anti-catholic verve. And the stuffed shirts, trousers and balloon heads still dragged around town simply represent the necessity to raise sufficient money for exorbitant Standard fireworks. This, of course, cannot be done here in Hong Kong where anything gunpowdery is strictly controlled. And that may be a good thing. After all, do we really want to be exporting a custom tied to the torture and execution of Guido Fawkes and his like?
On 31st January 1606 two of his fellow plotters were hung, drawn and quartered. Guy himself, although weakened from torture, followed them to the scaffold to await his fate. Having asked King James I and the State for forgiveness, he was helped by the hangman to climb the ladder. He managed to jump and break his neck, so avoiding the excruciating pain and suffering of castration, live disembowelment and dismemberment that would have been his awful lot. The sentence was carried out on his corpse and the parts summarily displayed in the four corners of the kingdom.
Brenda loves the toffee apples, hot potatoes and chestnuts of November 5th, but I’m more content with bands of happy face-painted kiddies knocking at the door for sweeties and not too bothered about standing about in a muddy November field around a smoky bonfire with dangerous, expensive and disappointing fireworks filling the air.
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