By Saira Baig
To the early Anglo-Saxons, November was ‘wint-monath’, or wind month, the start of the storm season. It was sacred to the weather god Thunor, the Anglo-Saxon name for Thor, whose hammering made the thunder − Thunor is Old English for thunder. His popularity was reflected in the widespread presence of hammer-shaped ornaments in Anglo-Saxon graves.
Thunor was honoured in November with huge fires to drive away evil spirits. These bone-fires or bonfires also had a practical function: animals had been slaughtered to provide food for winter, and the fires turned the bones into fertiliser. German pagans sometimes put a straw effigy of Thor on top of their bonfires, and Anglo-Saxons may have done the same with Thunor.
The November festivities, including bonfires, merged with the earlier Celtic Samhain, and later Christianised, before being absorbed into the November 5 celebration. Although as British novelist and poet Thomas Hardy noted in his 1878 novel, ‘Return of the Native’, ‘It is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heath-men were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular feeling about Gunpowder Plot.’
Even now bonfires retain their primal appeal, giving us an enduring link to the old-weather-god Thunor.
However, here on a typical cold December 24 – just a day before Christmas − at the Premier American School (PAS), Harbanspura, like most of its counterparts in Lahore, the bonfire was honoured in a typical local style: playing local pop music, students dancing in the Punjabi style, serving lots of locally made foods, and families trooping to the school.
Yet, amid the dazzling performances by bands DJ Bulaand and Rapper Kasha, the spirit of the big night stood still – the big bonfire giving enough warmth to kill the cold.
There were also other non-festivity activities such as face-painting, nail art and lots of games to make children busy.
Later that night, PAS Principal Zareen Tariq made a speech and then doled out gifts to games winners.
The architects of the event were the School Student Council and the PAS Sunshine Club members, including our ever-active Shah Hasan, making sure the whole bonfire episode was a success.