It's bangers and fireworks tonight!

straight from the camera 2 minutes ago...

Nice one Sandrine.

Just a couple of hours old, and fresh off the card. Digicam in one hand 5 year old in t'other...

Mike

mine are taken with my usual point&shoot camera (TZ4). It's the first time I succeed in fireworks (I used the auto scene mode for fireworks....boooooo.)

Sandrine, Mike -
It looks like a wonderful time!
What was the celebration?

AFAIK
it's related to that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_Plot
Is the 4th of July but in november....

people make barbecues with sausages called bangers (goes "bang" when they cook) and everyone have their own fireworks. Some very impressive. And of course loads of beer and cider. The celebration are on the 5th, but in fact, we can hear personal firework all week long.


But probably Mike will tell better than me...

John Angulat said:

.....What was the celebration?

Click to expand...

In short....

It celebrates the failure of one person to achieve what many, in the interveing years, would dearly love to succeed at.

Bob

Bob Latham said:

In short....

It celebrates the failure of one person to achieve what many, in the interveing years, would dearly love to succeed at.

Bob

Click to expand...

.......

Bob Latham said:

In short....

It celebrates the failure of one person to achieve what many, in the interveing years, would dearly love to succeed at.

Bob

Click to expand...

It's claimed that Gu Fawkes had packed explosives under the British Parliament and that his plot was discovered just in time.

Guy Fawkes (13 April 1570 – 31 January 1606), also known as Guido Fawkes, the name he adopted while fighting for the Spanish in the Low Countries, belonged to a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
Fawkes was born and educated in York. His father died when Fawkes was eight years old, after which his mother married a recusant Catholic. Fawkes later converted to Catholicism and left for the continent, where he fought in the Eighty Years' War on the side of Catholic Spain against Protestant Dutch reformators. He travelled to Spain to seek support for a Catholic rebellion in England but was unsuccessful. He later met Thomas Wintour, with whom he returned to England.
Wintour introduced Fawkes to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters secured the lease to an undercroft beneath the House of Lords, and Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder they stockpiled there. Prompted by the receipt of an anonymous letter, the authorities searched Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and found Fawkes guarding the explosives. Over the next few days, he was questioned and tortured, and eventually he broke. Immediately before his execution on 31 January, Fawkes jumped from the scaffold where he was to be hanged and broke his neck, thus avoiding the agony of the drawing and quartering that followed.
Fawkes became synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot, which has been commemorated in England since 5 November 1605. His effigy is burned on a bonfire, often accompanied by a firework display.[/quote]

The origin of the bonfire and effigy burning has been related to an earlier pagan festival and rites but I have seen no documentation of this claim.

Asher

The burning of figures was quite common in Britain and are related in all the Celtic and sometimes Nordic tales. Usually, in the old times, a real person was imprisoned in a reed cage then set to fire in a human sacrifice. The "rite" can be seen in a British horror movie called "the wicker man". I absolutely don't know about the possible connections with this celebration.


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070917/

I'm not sure that the bonfire 'Guy' is related to the pagan rituals immortalised in the Wicker Man ('though I suspect these are somewhat fanciful in their depiction - perhaps the US burning man festival is more akin?) as much as the execution by burning at the stake, which was also not uncommon in medieveal times.

Guy Fawkes was caught guarding the gunpoweder that the plotters had deposited under the Houses of Parliament and was later executed - though wikipedia suggests by hanging, drawing and quartering.

Nowadays I don't think many UK citizens are celebrating the preservation of parliament, and certainly not the overthrow of a Catholic plot... (after all, Britain in many respects consiers itself a bastion of religious tolerance) It's a more family tradition. The home bonfies and fireworks have lessened, though not disappeared as minicipal and charitable celebrations are organised. One of the drivers has been increasing governmental concern over fire and firework safety.

When I was a boy making fireworks was one of my hobbies

MIke