Crash bang

I could hear the fireworks in the nearby park, but we often hear sounds like fireworks in this area, so I didn’t think much of it. And by the time I realized there was a firework event, I didn’t know where to go and figured it would be too late anyway.

Well, I deserve to miss sweet-ass fireworks for not knowing what the hell is going on in the country where I live. The event in the park was Guy Fawkes Day. In a nutshell: Guy Fawkes was a non-Protestant man in Britain in the early 17th century. King James, a Protestant, imposed fines on people who did not go to the Protestant church.

In retaliation, Guy Fawkes and some other rebels attempted to blow up Parliament, hoping to destroy King James in the process. The attempt was defeated. In celebration of this defeat, people in Great Britain build Guy Fawkes statuesque models out of sticks, burn them, and set off fireworks. This is a big deal and happens every year.

I suppose I should make some sort of effort at evaluating what I have described. I guess that I think Guy Fawkes and his companions had a right to be annoyed about the fines on non-churchgoers. Maybe not enough to blow up Parliament or anything, but it seems to me that if this were an American holiday, we’d be celebrating Guy Fawkes for fighting for freedom of religion. But I am not in the USA, and here piles of sticks that represent such a fighter are burned. I think I am missing something, and I am going to try harder to understand.