Bonfire night

[casfic]

It's Guy Fawkes night tonight. Predictably enough it is very noisy. Mind you, it has been for several weeks, with people chucking fireworks around at all hours of the night. It's nothing on Diwali in India though. I was in Bombay one year, at Diwali and I don't think I've ever seen so many hideously dangerous activities connected with fireworks. I

Comments

[lessthanpie]

Living in Arizona, land of the roadside sign advising of the current fire danger levels, we absolutely do not have easy access to fireworks. (Unless, of course, you go to Mexico a lot.) The past two years, I've been in Michigan for Independence Day. They sell fireworks all over the place there. It was very weird to see fireworks going off from every direction, instead of just during the "official" displays. I just kept thinking how unsafe it it. :p

[episcopalwitch]

The Wiccan fringe of my soul strongly approves of bonfires at Samhain. Maybe I should start lighting one every year. I grew up doing so, actually, because when I was a kid it was still legal to burn autumn's leaves. We used to make bonfires in the street next to our curb, and roast marshmallows.

Sometime during my teenage years, leaf-burning became banned all over the country because of pollution. I was strongly reminded when I was camping recently of just why this was a reasonable move. The kids threw some dry leaves onto our fire, and the smoke was thick and black.

But it smelled wonderful. Perhaps next year I will collect a very small quantity of leaves and let them get extremely dry, then light them for a Proustian trip into my childhood.

[casfic]

Guy Fawkes night is, of course simply an excuse for a Puritan age to continue with the Samhain bonfires. It's all right, because it's not actually on All Hallows or All Hallows Eve. If it hadn't been Fawkes, it would have been something else. These traditions are very powerful.

[episcopalwitch]

And a good thing, too. If all we were left with was current popular culture, we'd be in sorry shape.