Peter Moore: Why do kids prefer Halloween to Bonfire Night?

Some traditions are best forgotten.

In my childhood I loved the fireworks on November 5^th celebrating Guy Fawkes’ night. We also spent weeks building the bonfire and the Guy. On November 5^th   we lit the bonfire and fireworks at the bottom of our garden followed by hot dogs. 

Today the kids see Halloween as far more important. Is this a terrible move away from a British tradition influenced by the Americans or is it sensible? 

Hindsight changes perspective. I never thought through the significance of Guy Fawkes. Were we really burning an effigy of a Roman Catholic?  

There was an attempted coup on 5^th November 1605 when Guy Fawkes was found with explosives underneath the Houses of Parliament before the opening of Parliament with King James. The idea was to replace a protestant king with a catholic. They managed to stop the explosion despite not having Nana Washington from ITV’s Trigger Point to defuse the bomb. The way that Guy Fawkes was treated afterwards would not have been allowed under the European Convention of Human Rights. 

All around London people lit fires to celebrate the King’s survival. A few months later the Observance of 5^th November Act was passed making it compulsory to celebrate the day. November 5^th became known as Gunpowder Treason Day. The law was repealed in 1859. If it was still in place I would be breaking the law by not lighting a bonfire, setting off fireworks and burning a Guy. 

For many years the attempted coup left a mark on British life. Recently I was on holiday when I met a family. The Dad told me that he had been taken aside by an elderly relative who told him there was a family secret which she would share but it mustn’t go any further. What was she about to admit? Some sexual misdemeanour or criminal activity?

“It was our ancestor who rowed Guy Fawkes across the Thames”.  That might have been a dangerous thing to admit in 1606 but no one would be arrested now. He would not even be no platformed at university. 

Bonfire night originated from religious conflict. There was a justified fear that the catholic countries such as Spain and France wanted to overthrow the King and replace him with a Catholic, which was the aim of the 1605 plotters. Spain had tried in 1588 with the Armada which tradition has it that was defeated by that great Devonian Francis Drake. The weather helped but maybe that was God who, of course, is a protestant. 

The 1689 Bill of Rights made it clear that no British Monarch could be a catholic as “it hath been found by experience that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of the protestant kingdom to be governed by a Papist Prince”. 

The Act of Settlement in 1701 went even further. No monarch could marry a papist or hold communion with the See or church of Rome.

It was not until the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 that Catholics in Britain were allowed to become MPs. This was only because the country united with Ireland where the majority are Catholics and so would not have had any MPs. If this law had not been passed Jacob Rees Mogg could never have been an MP. 

It was not until the Act of 2013 that our monarch was allowed to marry a catholic, which might be good news for George when he is older. Last week King Charles III met the Pope and prayed together at a church service.  Henry VIII would be appalled but, when told that the Pope was American Henry would have asked “where’s that?” 

Now we celebrate Halloween instead surrounded by skeletons, ghosts and spiders. I can even be very boring and point out the anatomical errors in the plastic skeletons.  

So is it positive that Halloween has taken over from Guy Faulks night? Surely trick and treat along with goolies and ghosties are better than burning a catholic, especially when our King is praying with the Pope.