was, partially because it is not the sort of history that is generally taught in high school, it is a mere footnote in the story of our republic. It was "celebrated" every November 5 to commemorate the arrest of Guy Fawkes in the act of blowing up the British Parliament in 1605. Eventually Fawkes and the conspirators were convicted and hanged for treason. For Protestant England November 5 became a day of Thanksgiving for being saved from Catholic Rule. Ironically the Puritans who did not ordinarily celebrate anniversaries or holidays like Christmas( no evidence that Jesus was born on the 25th of December) unless they were biblical, made an exception for Nov.5th, or what they called Guy Fawkes Day. At first the day was celebrated by huge bonfires-I have a tendency to picture these being in the town square, but more realistically the authorities probably would have insisted instead that the event take place just outside the town. Eventually the celebrations grew more elaborate.By the 1760's Bostonians were constructing "Popes Day Carts". These looked a bit like our parade floats today.Each cart had the figure of the pope, and beside him the devil, and trailing behind them on a donkey was Joyce Jr (Fawke's executioner was George Joyce). Boston had two factions, the north end and south end gangs, that would each construct their own Cart. They would parade them toward the center of town, then try to capture the other side's Pope's Day cart. This involved fist fighting, supplemented with cudgels, knives, and broken bottles. In the 1950's
they called these kinds of fights "Rumbles", today we would call it gang warfare. When one side had finally won by capturing the other side's
cart, both sides would bring the carts down to the neck of Boston and have the traditional bonfire.
When I first read of this ghastly holiday in Hiller B. Zobel's The Boston Massacre, I was reminded of the Two Minute's Hate depicted in George Orwell's 1984.When the image of Immannuel Goldstein, the official state enemy, came on the telescreen, people would scream over his voice and even throw chairs and other nearby items about until the reassuring figure of Big Brother came on. As "far out" as this scene is, it did happen,
not only in Nazi Germany, Communist bloc countries, fascist Italy and Spain, but also much earlier in 18th Century Boston with Guy Fawkes/The Pope as the Immanuel Goldstein figure (Pope's Day was also called Guy Fawkes Day).
In 2003 when the Bush Administration was trying to get support for the present Iraq, France refused to send troops there, and encouraged us to solve the problem another way, through diplomacy. Of course the French could have been of great help to us in this capacity as they had more influence with Baghdad than we did, and could have maybe got Saddam to cooperate with U.N. inspection teams. But no, as usual, we didn't listen to the French-we didn't heed their advice about Indochina (Vietnam) either and consequently became "embedded" there for quite a long time.
Never mind that other countries also refused to send their troops to Iraq,
France for some reason was singled out for venom that went beyond just
criticism from Washington, boycotts were called for of everything French from wine to cheese-even going so far as to pour the wine into the streets.
Absurdly enough we had to go changing the names of things like french fries to "Freedom Fries." Then of course came the real hate, a shirt which read France Sucks and to top it off, there is a little beret
draped over the F. This shirt seems to have become enormously popular.
In 2005 I photographed a local store window which had not only the french shirt but others which vilified the New York Yankees. I guess when the bigots figure that they're no longer allowed to hate the Jews ,Blacks, Hispanics, and Catholics, there is always the French and the Yankees.
The above Photograph entitled Shirts in a Window is currently displayed at the J.P. Licks Coffee shop in Brigham Circle in Boston.
Copyright 2007
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