Justin here.
In England we have a special night in November, called Bonfire Night. I come from a small village with under 1000 people, but every year, on the Saturday nearest November the 5th, the village had a bonfire and fireworks display in a field. It wasn’t very big, and there weren’t many fireworks, but most of the village went. One of the farmers arranged it with volunteers on an empty field near the village. A large bonfire was built about a week before – lots of scrap wood piled up about 3m high!
On the Saturday night, at around 7pm, the bonfire was lit. It was very exciting for all the children! Sometimes an unlucky hedgehog would die in the fire because it had been hiding in the wood, so before the fire was lit people would try to make the hedgehogs run away.
There were also some tables set up in the field with people selling hotdogs, popcorn, toffee apples, and hot drinks. I always had a toffee apple.
It was always cold, so everyone wore winter coats and hats, but everyone was happy.
Around 7:30 the fireworks would start. There weren’t many of them and they weren’t very big, but for a small village, it was quite exciting! The best firework was one which had a parachute. All the children would wait for that one and chase it across the field. Everyone was jealous of the child who caught it!
It was all finished by 8 O’clock, but it was a highlight of the year!
Unfortunately, it stopped when I was a teenager because someone got burned by a firework and someone fell over in the dark field and broke their leg and the insurance became too expensive. In the 1970s and 1980s many thousands of people across the country went to hospital with burns from fireworks – it was the busiest night of the year for most hospitals!
Nowadays a few people in my village, like my neighbour, set off a few small fireworks in their gardens and have a barbeque. Our dog hates the fireworks! But actually it is very difficult to buy fireworks in England now, even sparklers, and you need a licence to have a public display.
Big cities and towns have bigger displays, of course, although nowadays the biggest display in England is probably along the River Thames in London at midnight at New Year. But I have to say I was shocked the first time I went to the Biwako display in Shiga. Japan does fireworks on a whole other level – far bigger! I couldn’t believe the number of fireworks, or the size of them! But mostly I couldn’t believe the display was held in the middle of summer! So hot! So humid! NOT cold, dark November! (We don’t have fireworks in England in summer because it doesn’t get dark until 9 or 10 at night.)
But why does England have Bonfire Night?
Bonfire Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Night, is celebrated every year on, or around, November 5th in England. It marks the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a failed attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament and assassinate King James I. The plot was organized by a group of Catholics, including Guy Fawkes, who wanted to end Protestant rule and return a Catholic king to the throne.
The group secretly placed barrels of gunpowder beneath the Parliament building in London. However, the plot was discovered, and on the night of November 4th Guy Fawkes was found guarding the explosives and was arrested. He was later executed, along with the other men in the group. The following year on November the 5th, people lit bonfires across London to celebrate the king’s survival, and the custom soon spread across the country and even became a National Holiday for a while.
Over time, Bonfire Night became a traditional annual celebration. For many years, models of Guy Fawkes, called “Guys”, were made by children and burned on bonfires and children used to ask for “a penny for the Guy” to buy fireworks, but neither of these are common now.