Remember, remember, these dizzy days of November
November is a tough month in US study abroad. The weather turns
windy, cold and wet, you are practically ‘skint’ given some unanticipated
outlay on fall break, work is piling up, you miss family and friends, you’re
getting a sore throat, your internship
is getting pedestrian, etc.
To most Americans, the month of November means several
things: (1) Thanksgiving, the holiday [and religious observance, with origins
in harvest festivals] that looks backward to a legendary past and which reveals
so much of the American mind-set; (2) travel misery, made worse - especially in
the north - by bad weather: brave is the person that has a stay-at-home, behind
locked doors, with phone disconnected,
couch-potato holiday; (3) Black Friday, frenzied start of the Christmas
shopping season, when puffs of smoke arise from over-heated credit cards; (4)
the midterm or full term elections which generally tell us two things: the electoral
fickleness of the democratic crowd [which is true in most democracies]; and the
French writer Alexis D Tocqueville’s argument that US liberties were rooted in
decentralised government.
(5) And with the Giants beating the Royals in a great baseball
post season, the gridiron comes into its own. London welcomed 6 NFL teams this
autumn. Last Sunday, America’s team, the
6-3 Dallas Cowboys, lined up against the 1-8 Jacksonville Jaguars, the squad
with the best prospect of becoming the first non USA franchise in the league’s
history, if it moves to London. To home campus students it also means the
CORTACA JUG Match, lost on the pitch in 2013, but won in the media as Ithaca
students, however wild during the game, did not riot in the streets as the SUNY
Cortlanders did.
In Britain in general, and London in particular,
November means four things. First, on
the 5th of November, comes Guy Fawkes Day. You will have noticed the fireworks displays
recently. The fireworks are part of “bonfire
nights” when people get together to watch the spectacular displays and also to
throw their “guys”, i.e., their effigies of one of the leading conspirators in
the Gunpowder Plot, Guy Fawkes, on to the fire.
Fawkes and his co-conspirators were arrested, tried and executed for
attempting to blow up Parliament on November 5th, 1605, the day King
James I [James VI of Scotland, the only child of the Catholic Mary Queen of
Scots] was due to open Parliament. The
conspirators were Catholics disappointed by the failure of the Stuart king and parliament
to repeal Elizabethan anti-Catholic legislation. So bonfire night is popularly conceived as a
celebration of the liberties of the Englishman compared to the intolerance,
superstition and oppression of other regimes [see the allegorical treatment of
this theme in the Painted Hall at Greenwich.] Bonfire night also suggests how
brutal society was during the wars of religion in the 16th-17th
centuries. We have already witnessed two such locations: (1) the Martyrs’
Memorial in Oxford where the coach dropped us off, and Smithfield in London where
Queen Mary [1553-58] reportedly ate her chicken lunch while watching protestants
burn. I wonder which wine the sommelier would suggest to go with this royal
repast. Incidentally, the events of 1605 also link to the USA. More radical
protestants were equally outraged by Jacobean intolerance that they risked
everything on the dangerous 3000 mile sea voyage in rickety ships like the
Mayflower to practice their version of Christianity freely.
The second great November day is Remembrance Day, the
11th. At the 11th
hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, World War One
came to an end on the Western front.
Most observers and participants had expected that the war would be over
by Christmas 1914. But the war developed into an appalling stalemate, especially
on the Western Front, until American intervention and the collapse of the
German home front led the German High Command to throw in the towel before
“bolshevism” spread any further in the German fleet, army and work force. The British had fought most of the war in
Flanders and northern France. This is wet and rich farming land. With the ground churned up by millions of
shells, the whole terrain looked like a no man’s land where nothing could
survive. But the British noticed that
poppies grew in the churned up soil. The
poppies were therefore both a symbol of the appalling waste of human life in
the war and the hope for renewal and better times ahead. So wear a poppy this
week. Proceeds generally go to various veterans’ organisations. Every year, on the Sunday closest to the 11th,
there is a ceremony at the Cenotaph – the national war memorial – in Whitehall.
The third important November event is the Lord Mayor’s
Parade on the 2nd Saturday in November [November 8th this
year]. This is a tradition dating back
to 1215 when King John gave the City of London the privilege to hold an annual
mayoral election so long as the Mayor presented himself to the King or the
Royal Justices to swear allegiance. John
was trying to win the powerful support of the London financial and commercial
elite in his political struggle against the barons. The procession has become a parade with
bands, livery companies, the Lord Mayor in his/her official coach [which
normally resides in the Museum of London], youth groups, charities, etc. The parade is a useful reminder that the City
of London is NOT the London that we live and work in. It is rather the Roman walled city, the
so-called square mile, which is home to the banks, stock exchange and other
financial institutions that make London one of the world’s leading financial
centres.
The fourth big November day here is colloquially known
as “SO LONG” day as in ‘so long, it’s been good to know you”. It is rooted to
the flip side of thanksgiving and refers to events following the Declaration of
Independence. It expresses a British sentiment that it can do without America
now that it has Australia to send its convicts and supernumerary agricultural
labourers to. Besides, if America had not rebelled in the 18th century it would
be the world’s greatest cricket and [proper] football power. Where would that
leave the Germans, Brazilians, Argentinians and English?
PS. Pulling American legs on the last one.
