Parliament would convene for the 1605 season, with King James in attendance, and soon after the Parliament building with House of Lords and King inside would all be blown sky-high.
A leak led to the arrest of explosives expert Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators just hours before their "bomb" would be detonated. The men had filled a vault beneath Parliament with barrels of gunpowder and the fuses were ready to burn as the men made their getaway across the river Thames, where they expected to lead the popular uprising which they believed was sure to come.
The event, known as The Gunpowder Plot, led to the execution of all involved, and Britain still celebrates the terrorist attack that didn't happen with bonfires, fireworks, and parades.
But what exactly is being celebrated? The Gunpowder Plot was hatched as resistance to religious oppression, and the conspirators, who later went bravely to their deaths by public torture, were willing to risk all for the sake of freedom for their countrymen. It's revealing that early Americans decided to abandon the Guy Fawkes Day celebration thinking that it would be more suitable to move those festivities to American Independence Day, the 4th of July.
Whether for relief that terrorists did not win the day, or for pride in the spirit of resistance, or perhaps a bit of both, Britain still gloriously celebrates Guy Fawkes Day, now approaching its 400th anniversary.
Long before the seventeenth century Gunpowder plot, people in the British Isles were celebrating their New Year with bonfires and feasts around the first of November. With the arrival of Christianity those popular Pagan traditions needed- and found- new reasons to continue. The failure of the gunpowder plot on November 5 provided an opportunity to use rituals from the traditional November bonfire festival to commemorate a significant Historic event.
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