Last year I invited a colleague to Bonfire Night in Lewes. "It's spectacular," I said. "Your children will never have seen anything like it before." Too right.
As they made their way across town to our house they got caught up in the firecrackers, weird costumes, burning torches and loud music of a procession. The children - robust country kids from Kent - begged their parents to take them away from "this horrid place".
On reflection, I should have realised that "this horrid place" was not a good destination for unsuspecting visitors on November 5. Lewes's bonfire celebrations always provoke strong reactions. Some see them as a wild, free-spirited, two-fingers-up-to-the-establishment night of bad behaviour in the best tradition of carnival, others as a deeply politically incorrect all but pagan attack on Catholicism. Having participated in the celebrations since the age of three, I am with the former. But that doesn't make Bonfire Night in Lewes easy to explain, let alone justify. Somehow, in the context of 2005, whichever words you choose, it comes out all wrong.
Try this. A day before "the Fifth", the Cliffe Bonfire Society (one of the town's six bonfire societies) hangs a vast banner across the bottom of the high street. "NO POPERY" it says. (Last year a local Catholic wrote to the Sussex Express defending the Bonfire celebrations but asking: "Do we have to have the banner? What on earth must visitors to the town make of it?")
On the night itself the societies march through the steep streets of Lewes carrying paraffin-soaked torches and crosses and parading effigies of Guy Fawkes, the Pope of 1605, and other "enemies of the bonfire". The marchers wear fabulous costumes - Vikings, Zulus (faces blacked up), Elizabethans and Red Indians and are trailed by noisy marching bands. Bonfire Boys run with burning tar barrels to Cliffe Bridge where they toss them, flaming, into the River Ouse. Later the societies reconvene at sites around the town to light mountainous bonfires. Members dressed as bishops conduct bonfire prayers and repeatedly ask the crowd: "What'll we do with him?". The answer, of course, is "Burn him!" at which point the popes and Guy Fawkes go up in flames and the firework displays begin.
See what I mean?
In spite of what it sounds like, the truth is that Lewes is no more anti-Catholic than any other town in England - that is, not anti-Catholic at all. Plenty of Catholics take part in the celebrations and my chosen vantage point for watching the processions has always been from outside Lewes's Catholic church. I have never witnessed anything ugly and always take my own, gunpowder-hardy children to watch from the same place.
Lewes does have a strong non-conformist tradition and the Bonfire Boys, as well as commemorating the failed Gunpowder Plot, also remember the 17 Protestant martyrs burned in the town in the middle of the 16th century. But Jim Etherington, a Sussex historian, attributes the survival of the Lewes celebrations to the town itself, its close communities and the sense, fostered by family membership of the societies, that there is a tradition to be maintained, rather than to any acute religious sensibility.
The real purpose of Bonfire Night is to let people rebel for one night of the year. It's a hugely exciting and uplifting evening and few visions rival the sight of Lewes's old high street in the pitch dark, flooded by burning torches. The year I put on my mum's kaftan, and borrowed a black pigtail wig to march as an Indian alongside my friend Debbie, whose dad (very macho) carried the Guy, was one of the most memorable of my life.
Then there are the effigies, blown up so spectacularly at the end of the evening. These "enemies of the bonfire", hauled on trolleys through the town, are brilliantly crafted and witty - an opportunity for people to tell the establishment what they think. Last year we had Bush and Blair and, following the introduction of a much loathed parking scheme, an NCP parking attendant. As a child I remember an oil sheikh sitting over a barrel of oil, Princess Anne falling off her horse and a number of Maggie Thatchers - blown up with increasing ferocity as the 1980s progressed.
If nothing else, Bonfire Night should give heart to those who think the nanny-state is out of hand. The town may be packed with police on the Fifth, but they do little to hinder the activities of the societies who take huge pride in their own abilities to keep a lid on trouble (and to clean up afterwards). They certainly don't stop my favourite Bonfire sight - mums and dads dressed as Red Indians pushing baby buggies with one hand and holding ferocious torches in the other.
After last year's experience I have decided not to invite anyone to Lewes on the 5th November. It's the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot so the celebrations will be even more boisterous than usual. And the Fifth falls on a Saturday, which means the town will be even more packed than usual - two very good reasons why those of a nervous disposition should avoid "this horrid place".
