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Guy Fawkes Night From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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A Guy Fawkes night firework display Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Bonfire Night, Fireworks Night and Plot Night, is an annual celebration (but not a public holiday) on the evening of the 5th of November primarily in the United Kingdom, but also in New Zealand, South Africa, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador (Canada), and to some extent by their nationals abroad. Bonfire night was common in Australia until the 1980s. It celebrates the failure of the Gunpowder Plot, in which a group of Catholic conspirators attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London on the evening of 5 November 1605, when the Protestant King James I (James VI of Scotland) was within its walls.
The celebrations, which in the United Kingdom take place in towns and villages across the country, involve fireworks displays and the building of bonfires, traditionally on which "guys", or dummies, representing Guy Fawkes, the most famous of the conspirators are burnt. Before the fifth, children use the dummies to beg for money with the chant "Penny for the guy".

Other traditions In the United Kingdom, there are several other regional traditions that accompany Guy Fawkes/Bonfire night: the eating of bonfire toffee, a dark type of toffee made with black treacle; parkin, a cake made with the same black treacle; toffee apples, the traditional 'apple lollipop', which consists of an apple coated in toffee on top of a stick; and baked potatoes, which are wrapped in foil and cooked in the bonfire or its embers.
Guy Fawkes Night (and the weekend closest to it) is the main night for both amateur and official fireworks displays in the UK. Since about 2000, fireworks have been used widely in the weeks around Bonfire Night, though they have always been available for the couple of months surrounding the fifth. Other festivals in the surrounding weeks, such as Diwali, impact on this.
In Australia, Guy Fawkes Night (commonly called "cracker night" as a reference to the use of fireworks) was widely celebrated until the 1980s, but has now almost completely died out. This is partly because state governments banned the commercial sale of fireworks in the 1970s & 1980s to prevent their misuse (many people used them to blow up letterboxes and other objects causing injury to others, also causing bushfires in the very dry Australian environment), and partly because of growing official disapproval of the anti-Catholic connotations of the night.
In the Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, this is a very exciting night in the town of Barrouallie, on the main island of St. Vincent's leeward side. The town's field comes ablaze as people come to see all of the traditional pyrotechnics.
United States history records that in 1775, George Washington ordered his troops not to burn the pope's effigy on Guy Fawkes Night; this is cited as proof of his belief in religious pluralism, which was later enshrined in the Bill of Rights. That, along with a general disdain for English tradition after the American Revolution, likely contributed to the day's demise in that country. Ironically, its national Election Day is held around this time every other year, but for reasons totally unrelated to the Gunpowder Plot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night


2006-10-23 10:11:07 補充：
那要等好心人翻譯維基了。