As I've often said, I love traditions. I've even created a whole blog about them, although whether it will ever get off the ground is another matter...
Tonight is Guy Fawkes' Night, or Bonfire Night. Two friends in different parts of England reassure me that there are fireworks galore. I'm glad to hear that.
I'm intrigued that Bonfire Night is never mentioned in the British media (I check the BBC news website several times a day, and have done so for years) and yet it's still widely observed.
In previous years, some commenters on this blog have suggested that Guy Fawkes Night is too anti-Catholic to celebrate. But surely the anti-Catholic aspect is purely historical at this stage. And even when it wasn't...well, religion seems to me like a good thing to get worked up about, whatever side you're on. It's religious indifference I don't understand.
From an Irish perspective, Guy Fawkes' Night always seemed doubly exotic to me. It didn't exist in my lived environment, but it also didn't exist in the American media that gave us most of our representations of everyday life, then as now. Nothing is more exotic than something which is just one step away from the familiar. (It recalls to me that uncanny line in The Everlasting Man by Chesterton, about finding an unknown room in your own house-- an image that is endlessly evocative to me.)
I was a raging anglophile from my boyhood, and most English things seemed familiar, but Guy Fawkes Night was totally unknown.
A few weeks ago, I'd planned to write an article on Guy Fawkes' Night for my traditions blog. That never transpired, but I did find this interesting academic article on the history of the commemoration in Ireland. You need a JSTOR registration to read it, though. Interestingly enough, at one point the tradition was more keenly observed in Ireland (although obviously not among the majority) than in England, where it was believed to have gone into decline! Later on, it was discouraged here by the Ascendancy establishment itself, eager to avoid tensions.