h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Would somebody from the British side please explain Guy Fawkes Day and it's origins. The best I can figure out is that it's something like Thanksgiving and Fourth of July, and blowing up the Paraliment is in there someplace.
Or maybe not, any help at all would be appreciated.

Two good entries in H2G2 are to be found at http://www.h2g2.com/A199488 Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night and at http://www.h2g2.com/A419258 The Gunpowder Plot

Other than the more serious origins, kids over the world (including this one) just loved to stuff an effigy, put him on top of a pile of rubbish collected for most of the year, burn him and use the excuse to let off a lot of firecrackers in the nearest paddock.

However, due to some stupid people (who, along with do-gooders, seem to ruin everyon's fun regularly) Firecracker night (as it is also known) is no longer legal in Australia, except for ACT (which funnily enough is where most of our politicians reside). This is the same for other things such as really hard pornography and marajuana.

Erm, I seem to have drifted from the point...what was it again?

Two good entries in H2G2 are to be found at http://www.h2g2.com/A199488 Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night and at http://www.h2g2.com/A419258 The Gunpowder Plot

Other than the more serious origins, kids over the world (including this one) just loved to stuff an effigy, put him on top of a pile of rubbish collected for most of the year, burn him and use the excuse to let off a lot of firecrackers in the nearest paddock.

However, due to some stupid people (who, along with do-gooders, seem to ruin everyon's fun regularly) Firecracker night (as it is also known) is no longer legal in Australia, except for ACT (which funnily enough is where most of our politicians reside). This is the same for other things such as really hard pornography and marajuana.

Erm, I seem to have drifted from the point...what was it again?

I seem to have stuttered - pardon me.

Those entries cleared up quite a lot. Thank you.
We have "do-gooders" in the United States as well - they are typically called Republicans.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day a couple months early.

Democrats... Republicans... who can tell the difference anymore?

I think you've got this Guy Fawkes Day thing all wrong... what if he had pulled it off? You would have been rid of Parliament in one fell swoop. Talk about reform... you would have gotten to start over from scratch, and with little collateral damage. We here in the US could use a guy like Guy.

The week leading up to Guy Fawkes is my absolute favourite in the UK. THe weather is cold and crisp (uually) you get all suggled up in your winter woolies. You first of all have Halloween at the beginning of the week and Guyfawkes at the end.

The best thing is the food though. I come from a small village, fresh produce everywher anf the traditional meal for Guy Fakes Night is a pork casserole made with fresh apples, scrumpy cider, bayleaves, a little tarragon, a few cloves and a bit of cinammon. Bung it all in a large heavy-bottomed pot and stick it in the oven on a low-edium heat for about four hours. serve with herb dumplings and carrots...

My best Guy Fawkes nights were when I was little, at home in my little town in England. (Ah! the nostalgia) The whole of my road used to go down to one families' big back garden that opened out to a little patch of woodland. We'dhave a great big bonfire, burn a Guy, let off lots of fireworks and barbeque sausages and burgers. If I stayed up late enough till the fire had died down I was allowed to roast marshmallows.
I thought this was the only festival peculiar to GB. Am I wrong?
How exactly can they outlaw bonfire night in Australia, anyway? Arrest you If you set off a firework? Still, I can't see how the night would be the same over there; without the biting cold, hats, gloves, scarves and huge coats, I mean.

Hardly surprisingly in 1988, fireworks were not allowed for general sale in Northern Ireland. So any fireworks we saw were in organised display, and any sporadic load bangs in between were bombs going off.

But this was the year I went to Poly in Kingston. So late October I was studying and heard this load bang outside and thought OMG it's a bomb, until it carried on all evening and I realised it was just fireworks going off in people's gardens. Well after 8 years in London I became immune to this until the first year they allowed fireworks to be sold again over here. When I was one of the few people who knoew how to light them for a garden party so now at any point of the year I'm lighting up fireworks

Various effigies (e.g. Guy Fawkes or the Pope) have been burned at various times but I always believed that the origin of the use of fire at this time goes back much further to pre-Roman times. The fire was not originally used on November the 5th but on Halloween as part of the ceremony relating to the coming of Winter and so forth. In later times the tradition of burning was deliberately switched away from its pagan roots to other uses which is why we have the rather bizarre tradition today of 'worshipping' a random member of a failed murder conspiracy.
'Diverting' a tradition is much easier than trying to stamp it out.

Nah, that's too complicated.

People just like to burn things.