Remember, remember the fifth of November: A guide to Guy Fawkes Night

This evening, millions of people in Great Britain (and some people elsewhere) will celebrate Guy Fawkes Night by setting off fireworks and building bonfires. Many will light effigies of Fawkes — a 17th century revolutionary — on fire.

If you’re an American, this quirky, slightly violent British custom may seem pretty strange to you — not least because we don’t (yet) have any holidays that make it socially acceptable to burn effigies.

Here’s a guide to clear up the confusion.

In response, a small group of Catholic dissidents plotted to kill King James, blow up the House of Lords with gunpowder, and spark a rebellion.

To that end, they stockpiled 36 barrels of gunpowder in a cellar below Parliament, in London. The plan was to light the gunpowder on November 5, 1605, when the king would be in attendance at an opening session of Parliament.

But on October 26, an anonymous letter was sent to a member of Parliament who’d been sympathetic to Catholics — the writer (who’s still unknown) didn’t want him to get blown up too. The member alerted the king, and authorities searched the areas near Parliament, eventually discovering a dissident named Guy Fawkes guarding the gunpowder late in the evening on November 4. Fawkes and several other co-conspirators were brought to the king, tortured, sentenced to death, then hanged, drawn, and quartered.

Although Fawkes wasn’t the leader of the plan (that was another dissident Robert Catesby), he became the most notorious revolutionary, and the event as a whole became known as the Gunpowder Plot.

In the following years, the anniversary of this plot being foiled became a celebratory state holiday, a little like our Independence Day. Initially, it was called Gunpowder Treason Day.

Eventually, it became more common to burn an effigy of Fawkes, rather than the Pope, and the anti-Catholic vibe was toned down a bit and replaced by nationalist sentiments. It also became common for children to collect firewood and build their own effigies, then go door to door asking neighbors for money in exchange, as part of a custom a bit like trick-or-treating.

Bonfire ceremonies often opened with a rhyming verse, which begins with a line you’re probably familiar with: “Remember, remember! The fifth of November, The Gunpowder treason and plot.”

The holiday has declined in importance in Britain in recent years (and there certainly aren’t people lighting up cat-filled Pope effigies). But lots of people and communities still have bonfire celebrations, light fireworks, and sometimes burn Fawkes effigies. It’s now known as Guy Fawkes Night, or sometimes Bonfire Night.

The holiday is also celebrated in some other British Commonwealth countries, such as New Zealand, and was actually celebrated in the United States prior to the American Revolution.

Masks were often put on effigies before burning. And, in the 1980s comic strip V for Vendetta, the protagonist — a vigilante fighting a future totalitarian government — wore a Fawkes mask similar to the ones frequently sold in those days. The 2006 movie adaptation of the comic raised the profile of the mask, and cemented it as a symbol of opposition to authority.

In the years since, all sorts of groups — including Anonymous, but also protestors in Bahrain, Turkey, and Brazil — have adopted it.