How Guy Fawkes night lost its sparkle

Guy Fawkes night in the UK isn't the dramatic event it once was, but fireworks are increasingly being used to celebrate other big occasions. Photo / AP

Remember, remember the fifth of November? There is a good chance you may have forgotten. This chilly autumn night, once synonymous with the excitement and drama of fire - whether shooting into the sky with a fizz and a bang or crackling at the bottom of the garden as flames consume a homemade effigy, was for many generations an eagerly anticipated date in the calendar.

But now some devotees of this home-grown festival of fire, marking the day that Protestant Britain rejoiced in its defeat of the Catholic gunpowder plot to bring down James I, fear that our long-held love affair with the death of Guy Fawkes might be in danger of fizzling out.

The blame is being laid at two scourges of the modern world.

The first is the health-and-safety culture which, while successfully halving the grim annual toll of fireworks injuries, has extinguished some of the dangerous allure the night once held.

The second is the seemingly unstoppable American juggernaut that is taking over Halloween in the UK.

According to one estimate last week, sales of fireworks are down 40 per cent compared to this time last year while spending on plastic ghouls' outfits and rubber spiders made Halloween the fourth biggest consumer binge after Christmas, Easter and Valentine's Day.

The growth in popularity of trick-or-treating has been truly terrifying to those who regard it as an upstart Hollywood import.

Though long practised in Scotland - a throwback to Samhain which marked the onset of winter for the Celts - the first that many English audiences heard of it was via television and film in the 1970s and 1980s, most memorably in Steven Spielberg's ET.

This year, spending on Halloween in the UK is expected to exceed £270m (NZ$615m). Some retailers have reported a 20-fold increase in sales over the last decade, turning pumpkins into a £25m-a-year industry. Yet this is still only a fraction of the amount spent in the US: nearly $5bn (NZ$6.8bn) or $60 a head.

For retailers, the attraction of Halloween over Guy Fawkes is simple, explained Bryan Roberts of analysts Planet Retail.

"Apart from the fireworks themselves there are no specific products or merchandise available for bonfire night," he said.

"But Halloween is going through the roof. A lot of retailers are reporting 40 to 50 per cent growth and it is the fastest-growing event in Britain. Part of that is down to changing consumer tastes but part of that is because retailers are pushing it so hard. If you cast your mind back six or seven years, there was very little in store but now most big supermarkets will have a whole aisle devoted to it," he added.