Who Wants to Party?

“Trust me, I've been there,” says Zoe Williams

IN BRITAIN, EVERY YEAR ON 5 NOVEMBER we have Bonfire Night, celebrating political resistance. Wait, nope, what am I talking about? It’s not a mark of respect for Guy Fawkes, it’s there simply to note the date of his transgression, and celebrate the swift and angry authoritarian response. I don’t know what kind of Chinese whispers turned this into an opportunity for fireworks – you’d think it would be more appropriate to mark the date by all behaving incredibly well, in accordance with the laws and customs of our country. We could observe the proper speed limit and return library books all day, then in the evening gather and eat five portions of fruit and vegetables in an all-night frenzy of orgiastic obedience.

At about the same time in Italy, in a town near Rome, they have a pre-Christmas festival of their own, Festa del Cornuto – for the mockery of anyone who has been cuckolded during the year. They wear triangle hats and eat Cornettos, and people who are already in unbearable psychic pain get to parade their own humiliation up and down the streets they were raised in. This is another counter-intuitive festival. Surely, as communities, we spend all year mocking the sad-sack spouses of the promiscuous? If we’re going to choose a figure of fun as a one-off event, why can’t it be the people who aren’t mocked the rest of the year, the popular people, maybe even the people who are cheating? That would make sense, and it would also make more sense of the fireworks. They could be, like, metaphors for domestic discord.

Any more than five minutes spent considering the winter festivals of the Northern Hemisphere, and you suddenly notice that they are all totally nonsensical. In the port of Calvi in Corsica, by the way, they celebrate the fact that it’s quite windy with a festival of wind. In the US, the incredible industry they’ve built up around Halloween is all that’s standing between them and bankruptcy. There’s nothing remotely festive about any of this. Great! Someone’s tried to blow up our seat of government. Let’s have a party! Mate, you think that’s good news? My husband is having it away with my second cousin. Well, I will see your broken marriage, and raise you one ghost. I have a ghost in my garage!

The ex-smoker in me can make sense of all this: these aren’t occasions for joy, they are excuses for it. Just as, when you go through that hideous twilight of self-denial where you only smoke with a drink, you will find a million and one reasons to go for a drink. When the dark nights of winter set in, that’s what whole cultures become – desperate fun-seekers looking for any excuse, doesn’t matter how rubbish.

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