hey UK folks: why do you celebrate fifth of november, the day on which a terrorist has failed to blow up the parliament, by blowing up things in the sky?
@whitequark because fireworks good. We also burn an effigy of him on a bonfire if that helps?
@whitequark afaik we actually don't know the full history of how the celebration evolved, because it was 400 years ago.
people lighting bonfires as a form of celebration, especially in relation to events involving kings, goes back as far as written record. people were still doing it as recently as WW2.
anyhoo, when the Guy Fawkes plot was foiled folks lit bonfires in celebration that the king didn't get killed, which became an annual thing.
@whitequark its best not to try and explain these traditions that are only very loosely attached to their origin.
@whitequark my grandfather would do both a massive bonfire and blow things up in the sky
@whitequark just dug up some details. the TL;DR is various military and militia groups started detonating small barrels of gunpowder as a public spectacle as part of the celebration, somewhere around the third to fifth year of the celebration, and that probably kicked off the fireworks connection once they became available.
@gsuberland @whitequark which leads to the follow-up question, "why did the military think it was a good idea to reenact an attempted coup as public entertainment"
@ratsnakegames @whitequark my guess would be that the primary motivation was "big bang = fun", with some vague post-hoc ironic symbolism as the justification.