A frugal life is an easy life!

It is fair to say I am "out of touch" with most people, I grew up in the 1970's - in a family where traditional British occasions were celebrated - I was educated at schools where the facts behind those celebrated traditions were taught in history lessons.
When we had sprog 1, our new family continued those traditions and celebrations, right up until he hit 16 years of age, we still do in a smaller less spectacular way.

With a new baby in the house, I worry that these traditions will have all but vanished by the time she is of an age where she asks questions about them and can enjoy the celebrations that mark each of them.

Tonight, is bonfire night a time of great excitement for me as an English child, but as I stood out on the doorstep (smoking again) I cannot recall a bonfire night celebrated so little.
I expected at 8pm on bonfire night, for the sky to be lit up with all the fireworks, the echoing on the wind of excited voices of children, as fires are lit around the country, baked potatoes, cooked on the fire, bonfire or treacle toffee, toffee apples, etc, wonderful fare, to celebrate the stopping of the gunpowder plot.
Instead, what I witnessed was a lacklustre display of just five fireworks in the sky, the sounds of silence and nearby traffic was all that could be heard.
Once upon a time, and not that long ago, whole families would take a box of fireworks up to the local bonfire, built by the children of the area and containing stacks of waste and rubbish that the neighbourhood had given to the children to get rid of, the fire would be lit, all the parents set off their fireworks and the mums would present Parkin, treacle toffee, toffee apples, baked spuds cooked on the embers of the fire.

From 7pm to 11pm or 12pm, the families would straggle back to their homes, exhausted and full up, the children smelling of smoke with blackened faces and hands, with a new memory created, that would last for the rest of their life!

In today's Britain, it is all funfares that are held on council land that we already own and pay to maintain, charging us £2-£5 entry fee to get in and to watch some damp squib of a firework display which is so far away you cannot even see the smoke created by the fireworks. The rides that normally cost £1 (expensive enough) now charge the public sheep £2 a ride.
Even the huge bonfires that these displays used to light have now gone.
What has a funfare got to do with the gunpowder plot?

Bonfire night was a tradition that cost the price of a basic box of fireworks and the price of a few basic ingredients to make some bonfire toffee or toffee apples etc.
The traditional bonfire night is almost extinct, re-enacted only by people who have a small fires in their back gardens and involves buying in enough beer to get half the town tipsy, it is now called a "bonfire party!"

This year so far, we have had Christmas adverts on television before halloween, Christmas trees are being put up in shops and stores before a single firework is lit.
Halloween, we are told, is now an industry, (only because the businesses want to sell us something - sprog1 paid £40 for a £2 shirt with some fur attached to the chest - supposedly a werewolf - just for a halloween beer party!) The scenes at asda on saturday afternoon were sad, muppets clambering for £5 tubs of haribo sweets (containing £2 worth of sweets and full of additives) and tacky masks and everything deemed by the supermarket to be "spooky" - whilst alongside of them, asda staff put up a huge artificial Christmas tree and made a display of boxes of crackers, yet the sheeple didn't seem to be bothered by the lack of subtlety from the supermarket.
Before one celebration was even over, the next money making marketing target was being put into place.
I must be old fashioned, it offends me, if I am going to face marketing and advertising, at least let one essential occasion pass by, before force feeding me another essential occasion to buy things for!

Traditional, celebrated occasions in British life, are disappearing, which I personally think is an outrage!