Happy Guy Fawkes' Day!

Lord Peter planned to celebrate it by proposing to Harriet Vane.

Rumor has it that Shakespeare referenced it in Macbeth. (Maggie came across this theory when we were putting it on.)

That same rumor connects it with Milton having Satan try and blow up Heaven with gunpowder: a moment of Paradise Lost I'd never been able to sympathize with. I, like Lewis, always felt that Milton's angels have too much armor. Demons have no business with anything so mundane as gunpowder, honestly. But if it had the implications of conspiracy-treachery-and-terrorism, that might be an excuse for him (Milton).

Further rumor has it that it's a major plot point in V for Vendetta, but I can't promise anything, not having seen it. (Yet.)

It's actually a rather peculiar holiday, one memorializing a foiled attempt on the part of one Guy Fawkes and his 12 closest buddies to blow up Parliament with King James in it. The motive cited was to do something about the King's oppressive anti-Catholic policies; at any rate, it had rather the opposite effect, and made England more enthusiastically anti-Catholic.

This holiday is properly celebrated by burning things, preferably images of Guy Fawkes. (What do you do with gunpowder conspirators? BURN THEM!) There was some connection, apparently, in the British mind between Jesuits and witchcraft, so burning was...doubly appropriate.

Speaking of burning, the OED word-of-the-day claims that the etymology for "bonfire" really is "bone-fire," and they used to burn piles of animal bones, or heretics, or whatever. Much as I like bonfires, I greatly prefer them when they aren't burning people.