Fireworks Night

British history has many thousands of events that have been recorded but only one seems to have caught the public imagination and remained popular almost 400 years later. This is the failed conspiracy of English Roman Catholics to blow up Parliament and King James I, his queen, and his oldest son on Nov. 5,1605.

The plotters rented a cellar extending under Par­liament, and Fawkes planted at least 20 barrels of gunpowder there and camouflaged them with coals and faggots. But the plot was discovered, and Fawkes was arrested on Nov. 4, 1605.

Britain's celebration of Guy Fawkes Night on November 5 includes bonfires lit both in public sites such as commons, village greens, market squares and parks, and in people's gardens where fireworks are let off, children once used to, until recently, stand on street corners begging "a penny for the guy," and the burning of little effigies of the conspirator.

Treacle toffee, also known as cinder toffee because of its very dark brown col­our, is traditionally eaten by the bonfire. There is never a Bank Holiday on Novem­ber the 5^th.

Mother's Day

Called both Mother's Day and Mothering Sunday in Britain, this is by far the most widely celebrated such day in Britain although marketing organisations have attempted to introduce many similar days throughout the year. In Britain, only Fa­ther's Day in June has had any noticeable impact and Grandmother's Day has a few adherents. Americans have meanwhile succeeded in having at least one relative's Day per month.

This day was originally called Laetare Sun­day, and is the fourth Sunday in Lent in the We­stern Christian Church. In medieval England, Simnel cakes (special rich fruitcakes) were consumed on this day.

Today greetings cards, flowers and gifts are presented on Mothering Sunday and children in most Infant Schools usually spend a couple of days breaking off normal lessons to craft gifts for their mothers.

Americans claim that Mothering Sunday started in Grafton, West Virginia, when Anna Jarvis observed the anniversary of her mother's death in 1908 at the Andrews Methodist Church.

Easter

Easter is the main festival of the Christian church year, celebrating the Resur­rection of Jesus on the third day after his Crucifixion. In Britain it very much tends to take second place after Christmas in importance and is seen much more as an op­portunity to take a short holiday than as a religious commemoration

The first day of the festival is Good Friday, commemorating the crucifixion, a day of fast by Christians from about the 2^nd century.

Easter customs have taken a variety of forms, in which, for example, eggs, for­merly forbidden to be eaten during Lent, have been prominent as symbols of new life and resurrection.

A few towns and villages in Britain have retained the tradition of "egg rolling" where children race hard- boiled eggs by rolling them down a hill on Good Friday. Egg-painting with pat­terns and colours was used to identify an individual's egg. Such 'egg races' appear to date only from the Middle Ages and so are probably op­portunities for fun without deeper symbolic significance.

These Easter Eggs appear on the shelves of shops in Britain immediately after the New Year as it has become polite custom to present chocolate eggs to family, friends and acquaintances on Easter Sunday in echo of Christmas gift-giving. Many British people associate Easter with over-eating of chocolate eggs. The Easter Bunny is often central to how Easter is presented to children, along with chicks, another symbol of new-born life in spring. Americans, like many western Europeans, give hollow chocolate bunnies at Easter, rather than chocolate eggs as in Britain.