Two Guys And History

History has a way of rewriting itself. November 5th was Guy Fawkes Day, going back to merry old England in 1605 when he conspired to blow up the House of Lords. The thwarted plot was in protest against the persecution of Catholics by King James. Apparently it wasn’t so merry for everyone.

Now, five centuries later, kids create straw-filled effigies and go around asking, "A penny for the old guy?" It morphed into a frolic around bonfires whooping it up at the end of harvest time; a sort of British version of what we call Halloween.

That was once a pagan ritual, usurped by Christians to honor all saints but not over my dead body said the peasants (that’s us) who spooked the church to concede the 31^st of October to a bit of mischief and costuming.

In my misspent youth that night was marked by chalking buildings and each other. For those bent upon small anarchies, an overturned garbage can or toilet papering a tree was tolerated.

One wonders how history will treat the reign of the guy who has shredded our Constitution, defaced the White House and subverted our Justice Department and the Courts. Will kids orange their faces, on his birthday, wear red ties and compete for braggadocio prizes and the most outrageous lies or wear masks and beat each other up, celebrating it as Bully’s Day? Will he be pitied or scorned? Or will it a day of national shame? How to mourn the dilapidation of language and restore it?

Whatever happened to chalk? And where is the Boy Scout Oath of helping each other, of telling the truth and keeping promises, of being a friend to people very different from you, being respectful for the rights of others?

Seemingly, all is forgotten in these uncaring times. In the sausage factory of history there's no telling what we are given to swallow. Maybe Peter the Great was terrible and Ivan the Terrible was great. 

Guy Fawkes set out to explode the British government and our Guy is imploding the cherished democracy we loved. If their Guy is celebrated as a day of revelry and fireworks maybe ours will also be remembered with festivities noisy enough to silence his villainy. Ridicule may be the best answer, or better yet, note our Guy's Day with kindness and love, for everything he wasn't.