Most Americans have only a sketchy concept (if any) of the British holiday Guy Fawkes Night, celebrated every Nov. 5.
There are fireworks (or maybe just fires?), and kids run in the streets hitting up people for money. And then there’s that mask.
A few questions answered:
What’s it all about?
It commemorates the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, in which a group of radicals planned to blow up Parliament — with King James I in it — so they could install Catholic leadership.
So the holiday celebrates treason?
It celebrates the failure of the treason. The barrels of gunpowder were discovered under the House of Lords on Nov. 4, the evening before the planned ignition, and the conspirators were arrested and executed. When word got out of the plot’s failure, supporters of the king lighted bonfires to celebrate his survival.
There’s a poem associated with the holiday that begins:
Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot.
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
And Guy Fawkes?
One of the conspirators — specifically, the one found in the cellar with the gunpowder. He was tortured by his captors but the story goes that he escaped the most gruesome part of the planned execution — drawing and quartering — when he fell off the scaffold and broke his neck.
How is the holiday celebrated these days?
Mostly with bonfires and fireworks; the holiday is also known as Bonfire Night. Effigies are thrown on the fires — traditionally of Guy Fawkes, but sometimes of other unpopular people, such as certain politicians or footballers.
In former times, children would cart effigies through the streets and beseech adults for “a penny for the guy,” which proceeds were supposed to be used to buy fireworks. That custom is now less common, partly because of stricter fireworks laws.
And they wear the smiley mask with the pointy beard?
That’s not part of the holiday but a recent creation, with little connection to the historical Guy. In the 1980s graphic novel series “V for Vendetta” — and the 2005 movie version — the Guy mask is used to symbolize the anti-government sentiment of revolutionaries fighting fascism in a dystopian near-future.
The mask was adopted in this century by the activists of the hacker group Anonymous and of the Occupy movement.
One last bit of trivia:
It is a commonly held piece of etymology that Fawkes’ name is the origin of the use of “guy” as slang for “man” — and, by extension, of the phrase “you guys.”
