At the risk of becoming the Holidays Columnist or being accused of exploiting my delightful English e-penpal, I have to share this information. It's too timely and too much fun to let go.

Besides, it's only fair. I made fun of young Kathryn and her compatriots for not doing Halloween properly, so now I'm going to make Americans envious of a British holiday we don't do at all.

Today, Nov. 5, is Guy Fawkes Day, and tonight is Bonfire Night.

Bonfire Night is not to be confused with Devil's Night, the night before Halloween, which was celebrated in Detroit with many festive blazes back before everything flammable was burned down and/or razed.

I vaguely remember learning about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot in school, but I can't explain it nearly as well as Kath did in an educational e-mail.

"Guy Fawkes Night … celebrates the fact that Guy Fawkes did not manage to blow the King, and the Houses Of Parliament (with lots of very important people in), up like he wanted to."

It was a plot by Catholics against an oppressive Protestant king. And you thought the age-old tradition of Catholics and Protestants blowing each other up was limited to Ireland.

A group of angry Catholics began scheming to do away with King James I in 1604, hoping that when his young daughter took the throne, she'd marry a Catholic prince because that plan had worked so well with Queen Elizabeth I.

Guy Fawkes, who wasn't even the mastermind of the plot but more of a fall Guy, rented the basement under the Houses of Parliament and spent the summer of 1605 quietly filling it with a couple dozen barrels of gunpowder.

The plan was to light it up on Parliament's opening day, because all the bigwigs (literally) in the government, including His Majesty, would be there for the painting ops.

Things went awry when the conspirators discovered someone on the guest list was Catholic. One of them sent a letter warning him to skip the big day. Classic rookie mistake for terrorists.

He told the king, who ordered the basement to be searched, and Guy Fawkes was busted close to midnight on Nov. 5, 1605.

Torture and death followed, but also fireworks and toffee. This is how the foiling of the plot is celebrated: You buy or make a scarecrow called a guy, and at night you throw it on your bonfire while you eat seasonal treats and watch fireworks. It's like July Fourth with effigy-burning.

As Kath put it, "Every Bonfire Night people build bonfires, and burn guys, and set off lots of fireworks! We also have traditional food to eat, Bonfire Toffee (made from black treacle), toffee apples and baked potatoes made in the embers of your bonfire."

Apart from the fact that black treacle sounds like driveway sealer, doesn't this sound great? It's like Burning Man, except it's Burning Guy and people have bathed.

Back in the day, you put your guy in a wheelbarrow with a can in its lap and pushed it around town, asking passersby for a "penny for the guy." You could use whatever money you got to buy fireworks and toffee.

That tradition survives today in Pittsburgh, where a guy with a can will ask passersby for "75 cents for the bus." Whatever that money goes to, it is almost certainly not toffee.

I have read that the Pilgrims celebrated Guy Fawkes Day when they first arrived here, but the practice died out because it was too much like fun. It was replaced by starvation and hypothermia.

I think we could absolutely revive it. It's a much more nuanced holiday than the adult version of Halloween, which simply combines large quantities of alcohol with beer-garden waitress costumes.

We could call it Shoe Bomber Day, and we could throw old shoes on bonfires to celebrate the foiling of … OK, I'm already smelling a problem with that.

Or is my black treacle burning?

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