(And let’s conveniently over look the fact that this post is ten days late, shall we?)
It’s a relief to be posting again: Oxford is such an intensely academic experience most of the day that I forget that studying abroad is also a cultural experience, as much as anything else. Last weekend, I was able to enjoy one such cultural experience by attending Bonfire Night celebrations in South Parks, Cowley, a neighbourhood located directly east of Central Oxford across the River Cherwell, which is famous for the punting that occurs there in warmer weather.
Bonfire Night — or, more formally, Guy Fawkes Day — celebrates the discovery and subsequent foiling of a conspiracy to simultaneously assassinate King James I and blow up the House of Lords in 1605. The commemoration of the downfall of the Gunpowder Plot has been observed annually since 1606, when Members of Parliament decided to forever memorialise their relief at having not vaporised in some massive explosion through celebrations on November 5. There is even a little nursery rhyme to accompany it. The film V for Vendetta has done quite a lot to popularise this episode of history in the imaginations of Americans, as evidenced by many of my friends quoting, “Remember, remember, the fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot,” on their respective Facebook statuses.
Traditionally, Bonfire Night is celebrated with a display of fireworks, the lighting of bonfires (as implied by the name of the holiday), and the burning of Guy Fawkes, the chief conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot, in effigy. Tradition was fused with modernity at Oxford’s celebration of Bonfire Night, as the fireworks and bonfire were preceded by what the English call a “fun fair”:
Those in the States, of course, will recognise it as a carnival, and, to be perfectly honest, the entire affair was strongly reminiscent of the Fourth of July — except, instead of enjoying a balmy summer night, I had the distinct pleasure of shivering out in the November cold for hours. To celebrate the American-ness of it all, my friend Bryan and I started off the evening with £2 hot dogs. It was very exciting.
Due to the exorbitant prices of the fun fair rides, though — no, I am not paying £4 (= $6.68 in today’s exchange rate) to drive a bumper car, thank you very much — I joined what would become a crowd of almost 20,000 people to observe the main event. There were some pre-bonfire entertainments to keep our minds off the cold, and the following pictures with you for these two reasons:
(1) My otherwise trusty Nikon D60 decided to die on me during the fireworks, so I never got a chance to take pictures of the bonfire, which, given I had never seen one before, was naturally the most exciting part of the evening. The mountain of wooden crates and discarded furniture that would become the bonfire, though, can spotted in the first picture. Trust me when I say that, when consumed with flame, it was very much the sight to behold: I was standing a good distance from it and was warmed up again in almost no time at all. It was a terrifying creature, all liquid red & black, but very impressive as well.
(2) The second picture is just really cool.
Also worth noting in the first picture is a wicker man-esque thing standing in front of the bonfire. That was the so-called “Ice Queen,” which was set alight first. I can only guess that it was a proxy for Guy Fawkes, but knowing that the figure was female lent the entire ceremony a decidedly medieval feel — witch burnings, anyone? But, perhaps, it needs a wider historical context than that. That Guy Fawkes Day remains a fixture in British historical memory is a clear indication of how much religious struggle defined a very formative part of this country’s history. Indeed, Oxford was at the centre of many of the political and religious conflicts of the 16th-17th centuries: Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury under King Henry VIII, was executed, among others, not far from the city centre (there’s a stone cross laid in the middle of Broad Street to mark the exact spot), and the court of King Charles I made residence here during the English Civil War until the Parliamentarians took it over. Walking these streets as a student absorbed in her own minutiae — this journal article to read, this essay to write — I often forget, only to be suddenly reminded of it at moments here and there, that the past is never far from the present, nor is the bloodshed that had to occur to allow the latter to be realised.
But there was nothing like some proper American-style fireworks to dispel all such heavy thoughts from my mind.
