To wonder why we never see any Penny for the Guys anymore?

[Ceridwen83]

I'm mid 40s. I'm remembering when I was a kid and into my teens.

l used to see tons around this time of year! Kids with "guys" and a hat open next to it for donations etc. They were really common.

I was just struggling to remember the last time I actually saw one! 🤔

Are they still a thing?

As kids in the 70s NE Scotland we'd go round guising the week before 5th November with a guy in a wheelbarrow and collect money (for ourselves).

Everyone knew there would be a bondie (bonfire) on the 5th on an old railway line at the bottom of the street so would dump any unwanted furniture and household stuff leading up to it.

Some dads would light the bondie with our guy on top and let off fireworks.

It isn't true though.

Penny for the guy has completely gone I think. People still make and burn them on bonfires fairly frequently though. Where I am every village has a bonfire on Nov 5th and the kids learn all the history at school.

I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, never heard of it.

It was in Glasgow. The money was used to buy fireworks. Children can't buy fireworks now.

I grew up in the east, that’s maybe why.

@heekylel Just Google it! You must be very young or from outside the UK?

I remember it happening when I was a child, but I've not seen anyone doing Penny for the Guy since the 1970s actually! I don't think we miss anything much, burning an effigy of a real person who actually did suffer a horrific death (hung drawn and quartered, burned etc) is probably not something to be encouraged! He was a member of a persecuted minority but did plan to blow up Parliament and therefore cause massive death and destruction and plunge the country into anarchy probably. He was probably the first terrorist. But still. It's quite distasteful. It's over 400 years ago FGS.

People are getting sanctimonious about not allowing children to beg, but what about Trick or Treating then? Also Begging, for sweets. I think that's fairly innocuous though, except to some nut job flavours of Christians, often in the USA.

Yes, sorry, I suppose you are right really. Just the same as carol singing is acceptable. I guess Trick or Treat does fall in to the same category in that the kids have made an effort to dress up but it was completely unheard of when and where I grew up.

My Dad was a war veteran! He was in the Infantry throughout WW2, served at El Alamein and landed on Sword Beach on D-Day. But he was the one letting off the fireworks with great glee.

Fireworks then were nothing like the explosives that seem to pass for them today.

I've seen a couple this year already in the north east, two lads outside Lidl last week and 2 outside Morrisons yesterday. Their face when I gave them £1, they were made up. I think it's sweet. I suppose you'd call this a deprived area though so making a couple of quid is a lot to them.

Because it involves effort, tenacity, creativity, autonomy, initiative, resilience. Fewer children are taught to have these qualities.

Ah, now you do have a good point there. Some of the fireworks now are ridiculously loud. I don't remember the fireworks we had back in the 60s/ 70s being that powerful

The old penny died out and I suppose so did the common habit of children going out and about unsupervised to play or wander in the streets and back alleys. You don't see chestnuts cooking on braziers in the street either now or at least I haven't for years. Children going around offering Bob a Job has also died out, as the old bob or shilling did too.

I still think the biggest influence on why Halloween became so popular in the UK was when American Wal-Mart bought ASDA in 1999. Almost immediately from this point onwards Halloween became the ghastly thing it is today, as every other supermarket jumped on the bandwagon started by ASDA. Guy Fawkes slowly died out as Halloween became more popular.

You're right yeah, I haven't seen anyone doing 'penny for the guy' for around 35 years! (Late 1980s/early 1990s.)

Also never see carol singers coming around the houses either. Last time I saw them/heard them, it was the mid 1980s I think.

But yeah, lots of people don't have money in the house now. They even have card readers at the collection stalls that sell Poppies now!

Halloween took over. Probably more fun tbh though a bit of macabre British celebration of history has been lost.

@PembaI’m 38, British, and have lived in several parts of the UK and genuinely never heard of it! Obviously interested to learn about it, I wasn’t saying “never heard of it” to be obtuse or ignorant, genuinely intrigued as to what this widely known phenomenon is that has apparently completely passed me by!

We always had a lovely bonfire night in our communal gardens - people bought food and there was a barbeque. Some fireworks and sparklers. The kids made a guy and we put it on the bonfire with a mask of someone unpopular - the last one we had was David Cameron and Boris Johnson so it must have been 2016. The event was stopped because of Health and Safety concerns as it had become too popular.

Halloween was always a thing in Scotland. Growing up in the 70s we'd have Halloween parties at school and Brownies. We went round people's houses dressed up but there was none of the Trick or Treating which is just copied from America.

Mum parents village has a competition for them and people make and display them week before and they are then all burnt on the village bonfire. They are in bonfire society area so it’s a big thing there.

I'm slightly older but penny for the guy wasn't a thing in my 80s childhood.

Few displays I did go to did have a guy to put on. When we started taking DC to local organised display near us then they didn't have a guy at organised display but did have a bonfire and fair ground. When we moved been to- three different area displays no bonfire just the fireworks two with fairgrounds one just fireworks.

I know lewes have biggest firework displays - DH live near it before we married and they do different effigies but I think more generally guys have died out.

Guys are considered a bit gruesome these days, burning people alive is not pc. Kids have other things to do than make them and kids asking adults for money creates bad images of potential child grooming. We always had a guy, someone would donate old trousers and a shirt we'd make a rough head and stuff it all with hay and it would go on top of the huge bonfire after touring the local streets collecting 'pennies' for fireworks.

I'm a 60s bairn.
Bonfire night was a big thing in our NE England mining town. Gangs of lads and lasses running around like Imps, gathering wood.
"Can we have them planks, Mister?"
Stuffing yer mam's tights with newspaper to fashion a head, wheeling it to sit outside the Workingman's Club at weekend afternoon closing time - made a fortune!
Then buying a pick and mix of fireworks at the corner shop.
Big Bonnie on the communal field, Guy on the top, taties at the bottom edge for jacket potatoes, toffee apples that stuck on your hair and your anorak. Going home reeking of smoke and scruffy. Happy days. 😊

Oh, no I'm not thinking you were being deliberately obtuse at all, just genuinely surprised you'd never heard of it if you've always lived in the UK.

But we all have blind spots and things that have passed us by, I know I must have plenty!