Guy Fawkes Night is our national guity secret. We have no claim to it, and little good ever came of it, save the delights of children in wicked firelight and bangs and cracks loud enough to wake the Devil.
Trooping the Guys, Oamaru, November 1936. Photo courtesy: Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19361118-49-4 |
But the whole thing is an absurdity placed where it is, and when it is to this day: during Daylight Saving at a seasonally dry time of the year in a past colony when even Australia don't observe the festival. It's a throwback.
You know where I'm going with this. Every bloody year, newspaper editorials about grass fires, damage to property, cruelty to pets, and worse in the past (skyrocket fights between the towers of Otago University's Unicol hall, for example)Yes, I think, as I mentioned earlier, we need to move fireworks to another time of the year in the Southern Hemisphere. Remove the barbaric Jesuit Plotter observance - it is literally meaningless in New Zealand, serving only as an excuse for jokers to bring out the perennial gag concerning Fawkes being "the only person to enter Parliament with honourable intentions" (ho ho), move any actual fireworks to a winter month like, say, July, and stop the public sale of fireworks altogether.
of course, this is exacly what the Wellington City Council did this year, observing matariki as a true winter festival of light, and while the night was cold, the publc still came, braving a waterfront chill to be assured of a good show (slightly delayed due to an errant whale in the harbour, of course) at a child-friendly time.
Fireworks AND Parliament. Matariki 2018 |
So there - proof of concept, and we'd have the unending thanks of emergency services, the SPCA and parents of very young children the country over.
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