May the Fourth be with you
I was thinking about Independence day, which is a fourth, hence the title. It's a pretty nifty day to celebrate, as I suppose is thanskgiving, although thats a little more lame, seeing how all the pilgrims then went and slaughtered the indians who gave them food. But whatever. Britain doesn't really have days like that, ignoring our saints day (and who cares about the stupid old dragon killer anyway), our main unique one is bonfire night, where we celebrate the failed attempt to kill everyone in parliament by Guy Fawkes. Although it might have actually been a stitch up anyway.....Still, it's an odd thing to celebrate, made odder by V for Vendetta's bizzare insistence that the reason we rememeber it is because of Guy Fawkes attempting to strike a blow for freedom, and not the whole how bad it would have been if he had succeeded thing. We actually even burn effegies of Guy Fawkes, an even more disturbing tradition if one thinks about, which has been rather shadowed out by the whole letting off lots of fireworks things, which is far prettier and has less obvious symbolism.
We do have other dates we might celebrate- the signing of the magna carta wouldn't be a bad one, for example, or I suppose the civil war, but the following of festivals never really follows a logical course. Look at the disturbing and annoying rise of haloween, where children go around breaking the law for a night, because of some obscure pagan ritual. For that matter the whole easter varying according to the phases of the moon is pretty insane- we never seem quite happy on settling as to whether it is a pagan or christian festival. Probably both.
posted by Mr K @ 3:50 pm
1 Comments:
You know, Magna Carta Day would be kind of awesome ... Cait and I were in Salisbury Cathedral (where they keep one of the possible originals) on the 790th anniversary of the signing. We stayed for evensong ... it was also kind of awesome. I'd back a Magna Carta Day.
I'd say, though, too, that England is more concerned that a wider degree of interests are represented than some other nations that shall remain nameless.
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