Today, November 5^th, in the United Kingdom it’s Guy Fawkes day, the occasion where  children have traditionally made an effigy of Fawkes with a note saying ‘penny for the guy’ and collect money towards fireworks. Bonfires are lit in the evening and fireworks let off.  I remember celebrating this event from an early age when, in London’s Lewisham Park, a big blaze was lit in a large hollow and locals gathered together to celebrate.

But celebrate what? The discovering and consequent failure of a Roman catholic conspirator, Guy Fawkes, to ignite explosives underneath the Houses of Parliament, blow up the protestant King James I and replace him with a Catholic monarch? Isn’t that a bit discriminatory towards Roman Catholics and anarchists? Surely we have now moved on.

I had always a fear of loud and sudden noises. I remember my mother, in a mistaken attempt to ‘strengthen me’ carting me past the great steam locomotives which then pulled many trains out of Victoria station in London and also at the stazione Centrale of Milan.  The impulsive belching of steam coming from these mechanical monsters scared the hell out of me and, to a certain extent still does, although I think nostalgically that I should have feasted on those engines which now are only to be seen on privately owned ‘appassionato’ lines and on Italian national railway’s secondary lines ‘special outings.

Later it wasn’t just the noise that scared me. Penny bangers and their progeny were now not enough to put me off attending the notorious night. For surely celebrating the failure of a catholic plot and burning an effigy of poor Fawkes was not exactly a tolerant, integrative action. At this stage in my life I had become aware of my Roman Catholic heritage, something which in my teenage years I would throw off with a vengeance but which was then still fostered upon me by my pious grandmother who had accompanied me to catechism lessons and ensured that I would attend Mass every Sunday.

Apart from that neighbourhood bonfire night at Lewisham Park our celebrations on November 5^th were family affairs. Sometimes our dad would give me a quid to buy some fireworks from the local newsagent – I tried to avoid those bangers at all costs and favoured more peaceful displays like Roman Candles. Sometimes we would go to our uncle in Beckenham for the bonfire. It was on one occasion there that I noticed my mother was particularly downcast. I did not have to wait long to know the reason why. My anti-capital-punishment mother reminded me that Podola had been hanged that very morning in Wandsworth Prison.  Guenther Podola was born in Berlin and was the last man in England to be hung for killing a policeman. His trial was full of controversial issues including pleas against the death sentence because of amnesia. The year must have been 1959.

Italy, of course, does not have any Guy Fawkes Night and ex-pat Italians celebrating this event in the UK might be a little shocked to discover what the origins of that night are. However, Italy does have bonfire nights. In both cases they date back long before 1605 and into the mists of time. At nearby Cerreto there is the festa Della Baldoria where a gigantic bonfire is lit to celebrate the arrival of the spring equinox and the sweeping away of winter and its miseries. (I’ve described this event in my post at https://longoio.wordpress.com/2014/05/04/mayhem-in-cerreto/). I should add that the original pagan basis of Cerreto’s festival was syncretised by the Roman Catholic Church so that it has become a celebration both of Saint John the Baptist and of Easter.

Again, with primeval roots is our Garfagnana custom of lighting large bonfires during the Christmas period. In Minucciano, for example, the bonfires are lit on Christmas Eve at which time the bells intone the Ave Maria. This festival has connections with the Roman festival of light and has been re-created to signify a suitably warm environment for the birth of the Christ-child. Some of these bonfires are over forty feet high and are built by interlacing juniper branches onto a chestnut pole, usually placed in dominating locations in the valley so that the flames can be seen over a wide distance.

 Two festivals have done much to downgrade the importance of Guy Fawkes Night in the UK. One is Halloween which, as a perspicacious commentator has reminded me, is a re-import of the original ‘All Saints eve’ now tinged with pumpkins and witches. We have the event at Borgo a Mozzano in previous year, an experience described in my post at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2015/11/02/heavenly-halloween-hell/. This year, however, we gave the event a miss after seeing the immense lines of cars parked outside Borgo and were reminded of the recent tragedy in South Korea where celebrations turned into chaos with over 151 people killed and more than 100 injured when a crowd of mainly young people celebrating Halloween festivities in Seoul became trapped and were crushed to death.

The other is the Hindu festival of Diwali. As befits a multi-cultural society Diwali has gained the upper hand over bonfire night in many parts of the UK and its fireworks displays are often even more spectacular. Again, however, Diwali has its roots in prehistoric times: it, like Halloween and the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, is a representation of the triumph of light over dark, good over evil.

The fact that these festivals prosper today in our increasingly secularised society is evidence that as the winter nights become longer and the days colder we all still need some persuasion to remind ourselves that the sun, our primal source of life, won’t disappear for ever, to be eaten up by some cosmic monster but will re-emerge triumphant if we only have trust in Nature and its miraculous workings on our planet earth!