The Gunpowder Plot Pages!
Electronic Classroom
 Guy
Fawkes/Bonfire becomes Election Celebration in the U.S.A.
 Many
scholars believe that one of the ways that Guy Fawkes Day / Bonfire Night
was translated to American tradition was via the celebration
of Election night. This is understandable because election
night is scheduled to occur either on or within days of Guy Fawkes Day-
November 5. Additionally elections are after all just another way of removing
the head of state and isn't that just what the conspirators wanted to do?
For Evidence from New York click
here. Concerning Virginia, New York and Virginia
click
here.
(image above A campaign parade at night from Ingersoll -see below)
Celebrations in New
York
Election Day in New York,
by Ernest Ingersoll: pp. 3-16
p. 8 1 The Century; a popular quarterly. / Volume 53, Issue 1
The Century
Company Nov 1896 New York
"The
moment the polls close the liquor-sa-
loons
open, but the excessive drunkenness
and
brawling common in former years are not
now
seen. Five o’clock editions of the news-
papers
are issued, but have little to tell, for
everywhere
the clerks are still busily count-
ing
the votes. The streets overflow with
boys
who hardly wait for the earliest dark-
ness
to institute their picturesque part of
the
day’s doings. The New York citizen be-
gins
to break election-day laws as soon as he
can
toddle about the block. Bonfires are
strictly
prohibited, yet thousands of them
redden
the air and set all the windows aglow
before
seven o’clock.
Antiquarians
inform us that this custom
is
nothing but a survival in America of the
old
English celebration of burning Guy
Fawkes
on the 5th of November, in recollec-
tion
of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which
the
children have transferred to the mov-
able
feast of our election day. Maybe so.
At
any rate, for weeks beforehand the lads,
large
and small, rich and poor, have begged,
borrowed,
or stolen every burnable thing
they
could lay their hands on, and have kept
their
treasure as well as they could. Know-
ing
by sad experience the untruth of the
aphorism,
((There is honor among thieves,”
they
usually persuade some one to let them
store
these combustibles in his back yard or
still
safer cellar. From hundreds of such
repositories
the lads bring their treasures,
heap
them up in the middle of the street,
and
fight off raiders until they are safely
blazing.
Women and children swarm out
of
the huge tenements and cluster about
the
scene, where the youngsters are leap-
ing
and whooping and waving brands, like
the
true fire-worshipers theyare. The smallest
boys
and girls have saved a box and a board
or
two, or beg some fuel from good-natured
big
brothers, and start little blazes of their
own,
with a headless ash-barrel for a chimney.
Everywhere
are dancing, merriment, singing,
and
shouting. The great heaps throw out a
terrific
heat, glare upon the highest windows,
and
illuminate the whole sky, while showers
of
sparks whirl up and down the narrow streets
in
the autumn wind, yet rarely do serious dam-
age.
But boxes and barrels are slight, and the
flames
die down long before the enthusiasm of
the
boys and their applauding friends is ex-
hausted.
Now begins criminal foraging and
senseless
waste. Lumber-piles, scaffolding,
new
buildings, kitchen chairs, wheelbarrows,
and
sometimes even serviceable wagons, are
seized
by marauders and thrown on the fires,
unless
carefully guarded, so that each year
sees
not only a great waste of good fuel among
the
poor, but the destruction of much valu-
able
timber and household furniture. This
work
of hoodlums cannot easily be stopped,
because
just then nearly all the police are in
the
polling-places watching the canvass."
 To
return to the top click here.
Take
me back to Guy Fawkes in the U.S.A. Page. click
here
Take me back to the Index Page- Just Clickit right
here.
Concerning
New England New York and Virginia
Social Life in the Colonies,
by Edward Eggleston: pp. 387-408
p. 400 The Century; a popular quarterly. / Volume 30, Issue 3 The Century
Company July 1885New York
"
It was complained in 1724 that the Vir-
ginians
paid little attention to the two anni-
versaries
of the gunpowder treason — the 5th
of
November and the 3oth of January. But
the
former of these was celebrated in some
of
the northern colonies by fire-works, by burn-
ing
an effigy of Guy Fawkes, or by carrying
about
the village two hideous pumpkin faces,
supposed
to represent the Pope and the devil,
and
then consigning them to a bonfire. The
pale
shadow of this old celebration reaches to
our
time; boys in some New England coast
towns
still light their bonfires on the 5th of
November,
though quite unable to tell what
for.
In the region about New York forgetful-
ness
has gone further; stacks of barrels are
burned,
not on the 5th, but on the evening
of
the November election day, by lads both
Catholic
and Protestant, none of whom have
any
interest in the gunpowder plot, or any
suspicion
that they are perpetuating in dis-
guise
a custom handed down to them from
ancestors
loyal to the throne and Parliament
of
England."
To
return to the top click here.
Take
me back to Guy Fawkes in the U.S.A. Page. click
here
Take me back to the Index Page- Just Clickit right
here.
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here
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