Guy Fawkes Day

So here in the UK they celebrate a holiday called Guy Fawkes day.  The story is a guy named Guy Fawkes was planning to blow up parliament and they caught him in the early 1600's and tortured and executed by hanging.  So every year they have a holiday called Guy Fawkes day..  I met a few new friends in a town called red hill on the evening of Guy Fawkes we had some coffee and headed out on a bus to a place where the celebration was going to be... I really had no idea what it was going to be like but I heard bonfire and fireworks so that was enough for me.

So here is some further detail of the celebration.

Started walking up to the place where the bonfire was going to be taken place and walked by a large group of about 50 people carrying torches and pulling a cart with a very life like 'dummy' that resembled Guy Fawkes tied up on the cart and they were chanting a chant of some sort, evident-ally they parade the dummy Guy Fawkes around the town for about 3 hours before the bonfire saying their chant. We made it up to the place where the bonfire is taking place and it was a huge pile of leaves trees all nicely packed about 30 yds wide and 50 yds tall.  With a ladder in front going all the way to the top of the pile of tender.  There were probably over 5000 people in this park drinking, eating some 'fair' food and just having a good time. 

When it was time for the bonfire a lady dressed in a devil suit, and about 10 'demons' got the dummy Guy Fawkes and carried him up the ladder and stood him up on the top of the bonfire, then did a little devil and demon show on the bonfire.  When they finished their show they climbed down removed the ladder and the torch people lit the tender.  When the fire made it to Guy we found he was stuffed with fireworks and while he was exploding from the inside the crowd was screaming, cheering, going crazy.  After that we turned our attention to a firework show that was ever bit as big as a firework show as most I have ever seen for a 4th of July celebration. 

All in all it was a lot of fun .. even a midst the morbidity of the celebration!