Autumn feasts one : UK Guyfawkes

Intended for intermediate level, but with interesting links.

I say killjoys and trendies have nearly killed off 5th of november aka Bonfire night aka Guy Fawkes night aka Fireworks night

After my post I include a post from the telegraph suggesting inadvertent American cultural imperialism, via "sitcoms", situation comedies, on TV . 

FRIDAY, 4 NOVEMBER 2011

5th of November  aka
Bonfire night 
aka Guy Fawkes night 
aka Fireworks night
Click to  one bonfire

I enjoyed Guy Fawkes night as a boy in the 1950s.
It was very like "la noche de San Juan":


 bonfire, with an effigy, a "guy" on top, fireworks, and food......... simple pleasures.

But, more in my day , it was also very different.


 Perhaps 85% of the English live in houses with a garden , or at least a yard , big enough for a bonfire.
Usually, it was a family party, at home, but outside.
So for several days you had to find  old wood and old furniture, etc to burn. Children did this!
Every bonfire had to have a GUY on top to burn.

Guy -making, press for linkto holiday cottages

So children made one! In every family!
Very simple :
 you stuffed  old trousers, shirt and/ or jacket with straw or newspaper , 
tied the legs and arms, tied on stuffed gloves and old boots,
 a head and hat were always difficult, so was the face ,
 but the shops sold carboard masks very cheap.
Then you took your guy onto the streets and begged:
"Penny for the Guy"
You got money for some fireworks.Or whatever.

Click here for kids and guys in my generation, in london 

Click for link for a family 5th!-not my family!

5th of november  aka
Bonfire night
aka Guy Fawkes night
aka Fireworks night

The killjoys (matalaegrias=aguafiestas) and trendies (=progres) have nearly killed this  festivity! So halloween has been imported to replace it!

In my day , the food was soup, and  potatoes roasted in the embers (ascuas) - sausages were still a luxury in the fifties!










History :
1. you can check wikipedia in Spanish! Simplest.
2. watch  a satrical viewpoint.





 A  brief history, more formally, below










 Next: fireworks, to a famous popular  piece called "ROYAL FIREWORK MUSIC"
Popular: Remember, Remember
Th 5th of NOvember
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot!

"penny for the Guy" click to link for old newsreels

I see no reason
why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot!





1. Food

Roasting a potato in the embers(ascuas.)
When I was very young, the potatoes were cooked in clay (barro)
This takes hours and hours.
Aluminium foil = silver paper= papel  albal  IS QUICKER.
(Cooking tip: rub salt and butter into the potato skin before wrapping in foil)
I am told hedgehogs (erizos) cooked in clay in embers are very good.
I don't know!

Odd notes :
1
There was a slang pair:
Guys = peleles = tios
Dolls= muñecas = tias

But then the politically correct and the feminists shouted  for years, to  not call  females dolls.....
well , it isn't respectful, true,.....
..... BUT  to keep guy, for girls as well...........

I do NOT like being called guy (ni tio, en cuanto a eso)
I don't quite see what a lady gains by being a pelele instead of a muñeca.


2.
Bonfire comes from" bone-fire."
Before Christianty, which buried people, many pagan peoples burnt their dead ones.
It was typical in Imperial Rome, for example. Some religions believed it liberated the spirit for reincarnation, etc.
But 
in the British isles it is too wet for easy cremation.
AND
Fresh bodies need a lot of fuel to burn.
Especially one at a time.
However
Rotten bodies are more combustible.
You need LESS fuel
Especially several bodies at the same time
So
 you buried your dead bodies for a few months , then, perhaps once a year, dug them up for a fire together.*


So 
on a bonfire 2000 years ago, you didn't have a guy.
You had aunt Jackie, cousin fred, grannie, sister biliie.........
Fun!




*The  cremation IS certain in prechristian , both Celtic and Roman, Britain. There is so much archeological eveidence that it can be fairly reliably used to plot the dates of the spread of Christianity etc. 
The method of ritual partial defleshing/temporary burial  and subsequent burning is indicated  for the Bronze age Remedello culture in Northern Italy. It is very probable , but not yet proven , for the British Isles

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/guystagg/100057519/american-culture-has-killed-off-bonfire-night/
Hotcopied, ie without  permission, 

Guy Stagg

Guy Stagg is Online Lifestyle Editor at the Telegraph Media Group and is a former researcher for the Conservative Party. He blogs about the fringe arts scene, the relationship between culture and politics and, when all else fails, the zeitgeist.

American culture has killed off Bonfire Night

By Guy Stagg TV Last updated: November 5th, 2011

324 Comments Comment on this article

On the way out? Bonfire Night in Lewes, East Sussex (Photo: Getty)

Last year I was invited to a Thanksgiving party. The format was simple: everyone went to an American-themed restaurant and filled up on burgers and pecan pie. Fair enough – except that not one member of our group was from the US. Despite this, nobody else seemed surprised to be celebrating an American holiday.

That month had begun with Bonfire Night – the traditional date for autumn revels. But we all stayed in. Perhaps we had grown out of Bonfire Night. Perhaps we thought it was an anachronism anyway. Or else maybe it was because we had absolutely no idea how to celebrate the occasion.

And with good reason. Bonfires make people nervous about the environment. Likewise fireworks come with too many health and safety concerns. So what’s left? Fairs, fancy-dress and apple bobbing have all been taken over by Hallowe’en. While Guy Fawkes masks are strictly reserved for comic fans and anti-capitalists.

What is more, young people across the country have given up on national holidays. Not just Bonfire Night, but St George's Day, May Day and Remembrance Day too. The sad fact is these occasions mean almost nothing to teenagers and twenty-somethings: they have little sense of their historical significance, and few institutions to mark their passing. In fact, I’m not sure I even know what date Saint George’s Day falls on.

It is hard to say where the fault lies. Perhaps our education system, which brings people up to have no idea about national identity. Or perhaps New Labour, which fostered a sense of cultural cringe about almost all our traditions. Or perhaps it is the lack of jobs and affordable housing, which means that young people have no settled communities through which to celebrate these occasions.

But I think the fault lies elsewhere. Or more specifically, on the other side of the Atlantic, with America and its entertainment empire. America has exported its national culture so effectively that it has pushed our own culture out. As a result holidays are either commercialised following the American model, or else forgotten for more profitable affairs – like the recent fashion for school leavers to hold proms.

How has this cultural colonisation happened? Because although the money explains how these holidays got bigger, it doesn't explain why we started celebrating them in the first place. That has nothing to do with economics. In fact it's simpler than that. It's sitcoms.

Sitcoms are by their nature universal. The characters are all stereotypes and caricatures, the comedy crude and slapstick. Sitcoms like Friends and How I Met Your Mother have the lifestyles of single, twenty-something New Yorkers to young people all over the world. And sitcoms love parties. They are a chance to get plenty of characters together, to show lots of snappy conversations, and offer infinite opportunities to dress up, get drunk, and – in the language of a 90s TV series – "make out".

Sitcom scripts are always looking for an excuse to hold a party, and so they celebrate national holidays. American national holidays. And young people in Britain, raised on a diet of sitcoms, copy them. Which is why we feel more comfortable celebrating Thanksgiving than we do Bonfire Night. Because it’s hard to imagine the characters in a sitcom doing it.

But this is a shame, because as well copying their lifestyle we have also copied their values. Holiday by holiday we have become self-centred metropolitans living out an extended adolescence – divorced from any sense of place or time. Our national holidays have been colonised, commercialised, or forgotten. Sitcoms killed Bonfire Night.

Tags: bonfire night, friends, How I Met Your Mother, Sitcoms, Thanksgiving