November Traditions Past and Present

When I look back at my childhood I remember the way that the year always built towards the Winter for me. I was never a fan of the summer, with the exception of cricket, and Spring and Autumn lacked landmarks to split up their otherwise unremarkable progress. Winter, and here I am talking about the real Winter season of my childhood, ran from November to February.

The season started with Guy Fawkes Night. On November 5th every year, the British people would celebrate the narrow escape the King and Parliament had from the Catholic Gunpowder Plot of Robert Catesby and his co-conspirators, including Guy Fawkes himself who had the task of planting the barrels of gunpowder below the Parliament building. Children would drag a stuffed figure of a man around in a wheelbarrow or a homemade cart and call out ‘Penny for the Guy’. Now, if I am being honest, this was already quite unusual in my childhood but it definitely happened, and it was usually children from poorer families who did it so that they could buy fireworks for their displays at home. The one thing that was definitely different is that everyone called it Guy Fawkes Night and that it was the big event to start the run up to Christmas. Halloween was barely mentioned in the South East of England. Now, Halloween, the awful American version, not the fascinating Celtic version, is dominant and Fireworks Night is now the more accessible version of Guy Fawkes Night for a country that’s lost contact with its history and, apparently, needs to import American versions of just about everything to replace the indigenous versions.  I am not a massive fan of fireworks but I miss Guy Fawkes Night and we are poorer for it, as we have been for every American import from burgers to social and political movements.

Fortunately, we have kept hold of one tradition that we do better than any other country. I am speaking of Remembrance Sunday. This takes place on the Sunday nearest November 11th, sometimes on the date itself, and is one of the few serious events we have left in this country that we all share. Our reflections on the lives lost and changed beyond all recognition by war has always been deeply respectful and deeply felt. It has become more jingoistic at times, particularly in and around the Falklands War and the Middle East conflicts of years gone by, but even then the cost of war has been to the forefront of the reflections as the nation figuratively and metaphorically gather round the Cenotaph in London to pay a deserved tribute to those killed in battle at the behest of old men, and occasionally women, holed up in their rooms and fighting wars with other old men and women using the lives of young men and women to do so. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that sometimes war is unavoidable, but I also know that the servicemen and women who fight those wars are the only ones called upon to make any sacrifices. It was these men and women who we thought of every year as we wore our poppies. We have not succumbed to the triumphalism of the politicians of America or the Communist block, sometimes shared by their population and sometimes not, who often use Remembrance to make a statement about their strength rather than mourning the lives cut short or changed altogether. In the UK it is a deeply felt moment of national mourning that still prevails despite everything that has happened over my lifetime. It’s a tradition to be proud of. I remember watching it on television one year and the BBC commentator said that if the British and Commonwealth dead of all the wars since World War I were to line up in rows of three to march past the Cenotaph the end of the parade would be in Edinburgh. I really can’t imagine anywhere else other than the UK where that commentator would have made that statement.