The Irony of Guy Fawkes

Escape From IV: Extreme Edition

Remember remember the fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason why gunpowder, treason

Should ever be forgot…

It’s Guy Fawkes Day here in jolly ol’ Britain. It’s a day built around bottle rockets, bonfires, giant explosions and celebrates a day in 1605 when a group of gentlemen conspired to blow the houses of parliament sky high. Mr. Fawkes was caught sneaking around underneath parliament with a few dozen barrels of gunpowder and was subsequently tried and convicted of treason along with his co-conspirators.

Here in Glasgow, it’s actually the sixth of November, and the city is continuing to celebrate with an official fireworks display and carnival on the City Green. At this point you might have noticed that the dates don’t match up. The inconsistency is a direct result of a massive soccer (football for the rest of the world) match between Manchester United and Celtic Football Clubs. This match, despite being on a major national holiday was sold out and is probably the biggest soccer event that will happen in Scotland this year. As a result the city shifted the celebration so that everyone could participate in the game as well as the fireworks. That and the fact that if Celtic and Rangers fans (the two major teams in Glasgow) got together, they might just kill each other, more on this rivalry later in the quarter.

All over the country on this night people go out into the streets to light fireworks that would only be legal in Chinatown at home and to light massive bonfires, most of them with an effigy of the offending gentleman in the middle. It’s a national party built around the ritualistic burning of men at the stake. It kind of makes you wonder why America gets such a bad rap with this kind of stuff going down over here.

Last night was a huge party here in the city despite the official part of the shindig being shifted to today. As I sat in my flat (British for apartment) I could hear and feel the celebration outside. About every twenty seconds you could hear an explosion from someone lighting a huge firework in the park across the street. From my kitchen window, which looks out over the West End, I could see at least four explosions leaping into the sky at all times from all over the city. Imagine people lighting bottle rockets and roman candles and massive bonfires all over IV at once, crazy right? Oh wait, sounds like a power outage in Isla Vista that I remember from last year.

Tonight the party shifted to Glasgow Green, where the official shindig included carnival rides, big screen musical sing-a-longs, and of course, huge explosions. More than 50,000 people packed into a part of the city that you would never ever visit at night unless you wanted to learn what it feels to be mugged at knifepoint. It was easily one of the coolest and weirdest experiences I have ever had. It was a great atmosphere, everyone mixing together, having a great time, and singing along. It was amazing standing there with my head craned back, Broadway musical tunes blasting from every direction in accordance with the theme of the evening, while kids whizzed around on a carousel behind me. About halfway through I realized that I was waiting for The Star Spangled Banner to strike up and an explosion of red, white, and blue. It finally felt almost right when I saw those colors light up the sky, until I realized that they were there in accordance not with our national colors, but with the colors on the flag of the United Kingdom, whose we borrowed when we founded our country. Weird.

Think about Guy Fawkes Night for a second. It’s the celebration of a man who supposedly tried to blow up the entire parliament of the United Kingdom. (There is some debate about whether it was actually him who did it, or if he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.) This was a man who in this day and age would be considered a terrorist being celebrated nation wide by one of the strongest allies in the War against Terror. Irony anyone?