Remember Remember the 5^th of November!

Bonfire Night is a great day in the year to celebrate; it’s filled with lots of fun and fireworks, bonfires, music, games, food, families and friends.

Wrapping up warm with cosy gloves, hat and scarfs, children love to be given a sparkler to see how they can spell their names out in the dark air; or to watch as the Catherine Wagon Wheel firework goes off into the sky, giving off bright shining colours of golds, blues, purples, greens and all the rest of the colours of the rainbow!

Sparklers are fun, but always supervise children with them and never give them to a child under five. Light sparklers one at a time, wear gloves and put used sparklers hot end down into a bucket of sand or water. Fireworks are explosives and burn at high temperatures, so they need careful handling and storage.

It is also the time of the year you see “Penny for the Guy”, consisting of children creating life-like dolls to which they are given spare change by passers-by on streets or shop entrances.

But what is it we are really celebrating and how did it come about?

Bonfire Night traditionally known as Guy Fawkes Night derives from the person Guy Fawkes who tried to overthrow the king.

Fawkes belonged to a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot and later died in 1606.

Born and educated in York, Fawkes converted to Catholicism and left for the continent, where he fought in the Eighty Years’ War on the side of Catholic Spain against Protestant Dutch reformators.

They planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne on 5^th November in 1605.

The plotters secured the lease to an undercroft beneath the House of Lords, and Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder they stockpiled there. However, authorities were tipped off with an anonymous letter and searched Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, finding and capturing Fawkes with the explosives.

He was questioned and tortured and eventually he broke. Before his execution on, he jumped from the scaffold where he was to be hanged and broke his neck, avoiding the agony of the drawing and quartering that followed.

Fawkes became infamous with the Gunpowder Plot and it has been commemorated in England ever since. His image is burned on a bonfire, followed by a firework display.

For more tips and guidance on firework safety and the law, visit DirectGov here.

In the mean-time, how about making one of these traditional foods; such as hot jacket potatoes wrapped in tin foil, with casseroles, hot dogs and hot chocolate and marshmallows toasted over the fire.

Bonfire Night is a fantastic way to bring the family together and have fun; the smell and sounds of a bonfire crackling, filling the air with black smoke and roaring heat; perfect for an autumn evening.

Why not celebrate Bonfire Night with these fun Ulster Weaver suggestions, to dazzle up your evening?

Sorrento Gauntlet by Ulster Weaver

Hedgehog Tea Cosy

Halloween is a spooky holiday time in the year. Filled with superstitions about witches and cauldrons and things that go bump in the night, most people celebrate it on October 31^st by dressing up in a scary costume and trick-or-treating round the neighbourhood.

Ever since childhood, it was the one time of the year you could get all excited about putting on a witches hat and broom and ‘flying’ around the house or cutting up that spare duvet sheet and pretending to be a ghost; and more traditionally carving pumpkins out into menacing faces and lighting them up in the hallway window with a candle inside.

Many play practical pranks, go apple bopping, visit ghost tours, tell ghost stories and watch horror films.

You would walk from house to house down your street, knocking on each door shouting ‘Trick or Treat’ and filling your Halloween pumpkin bowl with candies, chocolates and sweets.

But is this what it is about? What are its’ origins?

History of Halloween

Halloween, also called All Hallows’ Eve, is a mix of ancient Celtic practises, Catholic and Roman religious rituals and European folk traditions that blended together over time to create the holiday we know today.

The myth describes it as a day when the dead can return to the earth and ancient Celts would light bonfires and wear costumes and masks to ward off these roaming ghosts. The Celtic holiday of Samhain, the Catholic Hallowmas period of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day and the Roman festival of Feralia, all influenced the modern holiday of Halloween. Nowadays, it has lost its religious connotation.

It was intended to give rest and peace to the departed. Participants made sacrifices in honour of the dead, offered up prayers for them, and made offerings to them.  The festival of Samhain celebrates the beginning of the ‘darker half’ of the year and is regarded as the “Celtic New Year”. It was also a time of the year to stock food supplies and slaughter livestock for the winter months.

Traditional images and symbols include; black cats, bats, werewolves, witches, skeletons, vampires and ghosts.  Black and orange are dominant colours representing the darkness, fire, autumn leaves, jack-o’-lanterns and pumpkins.

If you want to get into the spooky spirit for Halloween, why not check out the following items at Ulster Weavers to accessorize your kitchen when making witches brew & toffee apples.

Black Plain Dyed Tea Cosy

£8.99

Black Plain Dyed Pott Mitt

£5.99

Black Plain Dyed Cotton Apron

£13.99

Black Plain Dyed Double Glove

£10.99