Guy Fawkes Day had always been a mystery to me. It was one of those obscure holidays like Boxing Day people in other countries celebrated for reasons all their own. I’ve never been sure if Fawkes was a great Polish general akin to Pulaski, a former U.S. president or a leprechaun. These are the kinds of people who get the days named after them. I didn’t know that a failed terrorist attempt could earn a man his very own holiday.

Shows how much I knew.

I suppose now is as good a time as any to explain what this Guy Fawkes is all about. In the last half of the 16th century, England was having trouble deciding if it was Catholic or Protestant. It wound up on the Protestant side, but not without upsetting a segment of its population. Among these people was Guy and his 13 co-conspirators. On Nov. 5, 1605, they picked up 36 barrels of gunpowder at the market and put them in the basement of Parliament with the intention of blowing it up. Fortunately for those inside, Fawkes was apprehended before lighting the fuse, and after a couple of weeks of torture, he was put to death along with the other plotters.

The year after the failed gunpowder plot, Parliament established a holiday to remind people that blowing up buildings is a bad thing, especially when the people who make the rules happen to be there.

If someone were to attempt to blow up Congress tomorrow, I’m fairly confident that a good portion of the United States would probably throw a celebration in the man’s honor. In England, they’re still burning poor Guy in effigy nearly 400 years later. And some people throw the Pope in the bonfire for good measure, not to mention sending their kids out into the street with Roman candles and black cats going off in their mouths.

Guy Fawkes Day is also know as Bonfire Night and people throughout England get their pyromaniac tendencies worked out of their systems in one fell swoop. Here in Exeter, they had the biggest mass of fire I have ever seen. It was probably in the neighborhood of 50 yards in diameter and looked like a small sun had embedded itself in the field. The heat it let off was amazing. I missed the burning of the effigies and am not entirely sure that the tradition was carried out on this occasion. American-style political correctness crosses oceans to spoil other nations’ fun, and such practices are left to the more “hard-core.” Municipal functions like this one tone down the bravado.

A crew from the local news station set itself up for what looked to be a series of live remotes about halfway between the inferno and the fence that kept the public at a safe distance. I thought to myself, “I bet they’re gonna get hot in there.” Shortly after they finished the first segment, the reporter was wiping his brow and motioned for the crew to set up further away from the flames. The second shot ended, and again they moved, this time to the correct side of the fence. I can only imagine what he was telling the people on TV. “As you can clearly see, the fire continues to move in an easterly direction, away from our cameras and toward the countryside, devouring pets and small children as it goes.”

Of course, if any small children were burned to death that night, I bet it would have more to do with the fact that many of them were running around town with every conceivable sort of explosive rather than a marauding bonfire. Apparently, every child under the age of 12 is given 36 barrels worth of gunpowder in the form of fireworks so that they too may commemorate the triumph of Parliament over TNT.

When I went to bed, I could still hear them lighting off bottle rockets — the particularly hard to sleep through, whistling kind.

The next morning, I could smell the remnants of spent gunpowder in some places, and the sidewalk had a few more puddles of bad memories than usual. However, the city seemed no worse for wear. The man at the news agency was a little groggy but still thanked me and gave me a coveted 20p piece as part of my change. The washing machines in my building will only take 20p coins, quite possibly the rarest chunk of metal in all of Britain.

In recent years, people have begun to speculate that Guy and his pals were entrapped. It seems that it was rather difficult to acquire 36 barrels of gunpowder without attracting notice back in 1605. A possibly forged warning letter and the fact that Fawkes was caught only after all the evidence was firmly in place further cloud the picture. Add to this the potential contamination of DNA evidence, and today’s defense lawyer has got a good shot at winning this case.

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Chris Crouch is a sophomore in political science from Rapid City, Ill.