Guy Fawkes in New Zealand is crackers
Demands for a ban on the sale of fireworks to the general public have become almost as predictable as the fires they cause each November 5.
The annual event is one of many rituals and celebrations brought to New Zealand by British immigrants about 150 years ago and, like Christmas, Easter and more recently St Patrick’s Day, which were originally part of the Christian calendar of events, soon became part of our folklore.
We even mark Trafalgar Day, the celebration of the victory won by the Royal Navy, commanded by Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, over the combined French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21 1805.
These rituals have evolved over the years and, while Christmas and Easter are now more commercial than anything else, they are here to stay.
St Patrick’s Day is a day for anyone who is, or would like to be, remotely Irish to have a little fun but why do we celebrate these historic events and not our own? Apart from Anzac Day and Waitangi Day, many others are largely ignored.
Guy Fawkes Day was originally established to celebrate the discovery of a plot to blow up the English House of Lords in 1605, kill all of them and King James 1 with barrels of gunpowder by dissident English Catholics. The alleged conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, were captured and sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered, a truly barbaric form of execution.
It is said that Guy Fawkes managed to commit suicide before he was executed.
The following January, days before the surviving conspirators were due to be publicly executed, Parliament passed the Observance of 5th November Act, commonly known as the Thanksgiving Act to mark the King’s apparent deliverance by divine intervention.
It has also been suggested by some historians that the so called Gunpowder Plot was a set-up by Protestant politicians to convince King James to take harsh measures against Catholics.
Until a generation ago New Zealand school children still made straw filled dummies of Guy Fawkes which were wheeled around towns by kids who begged a ‘‘penny for the guy’’ to buy fireworks.
The guy was symbolically thrown on a huge bonfire, usually of waste wood and old tree branches, on what became known as ‘‘cracker night’’.
It was a lot of fun but there were risks and a fair amount of damage and injury as well.
It was not uncommon for macrocarpa hedges to be set alight, children burnt and even houses lost to the flames.
Few of us knew much about Guy
Fawkes himself, the Gunpowder Plot or the brutality of early political and religious disputes on the far side of the world and had little interest in finding out.
For us it was an annual opportunity to experiment with pyrotechnics and not a few letter boxes were blown up by stuffing them with reconstituted fireworks, usually by school boys who had learned how to handle gunpowder.
No one was killed or even seriously wounded but parental retribution remained a stinging memory for more than half a century.
As the sophistication and size of fireworks increased over the years the annual event has become a serious threat to life, property and pets and this year fire brigades up and down the country were hard at work dealing with fires that were completely avoidable.
It is clearly time to bring the nonsense to an end before pranks and accidents produce a real tragedy.
Many local authorities have attempted to ban the private use of fireworks, but while they remain legally on sale to the public, even for a few days prior to November 5, the risk remains unacceptably high.
If we want to see fireworks there are public events with spectacular displays, usually on New Year’s Eve, which surpass anything people can do in the back yard at home and they are safely managed by experts.
If we want to commemorate events which are relevant to New Zealand November 5 was the day in 1881 when Parihaka was invaded and on St Patrick’s Day, March 17 1860, the first shots were fired in what became the New Zealand Land Wars.
Like Anzac Day, April 25, both were defining events in our own history but, until recently, few people wanted to know about them.
We also have October 28 as New Zealand Land Wars Day and September 19 as the day New Zealand women were the first in the world to get the vote.
It is time we grew up and celebrated our own history and if we leave the fireworks to the experts we will avoid some of the blazes our firefighters are called to, hedges will continue to grow and letter boxes will be safe from the attention of over-adventurous small boys.