DOTD For Wednesday, November 5, 2025

A Drink To Remember Autumn - & Resistance

Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is an Autumn Bonfire Cocktail inspired by Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night.

Guy Fawkes Night, celebrated annually in the UK, has a vastly different meaning today, due in large part to the 2005 film “V For Vendetta.” But it’s important to highlight both the historical meaning and the modern one.

Historically, Guy Fawkes Night commemorates the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot, with bonfires and effigies burned of Guy Fawkes, who for much of history was seen as a failed traitor.

In 1605, after years of persecution by the royal family of Great Britain, a group of 13 conservative Catholics decided to take drastic action, and plotted to blow up Parliament and kill King James I, along with as many members of the legislature as they could.

They collected 36 barrels of gunpowder and stored them in a cellar below the House of Lords. But some of the plotters had second thoughts and one of them sent a letter to a friend, Lord Monteagle, advising him to stay away from Parliament on November 5.

That letter was shown to the King and he ordered a search. That search discovered two things in the cellar of Parliament: The gunpowder and Guy Fawkes, who had the job of lighting the fuse. He was arrested and, after two days of torture, confessed and named his fellow plotters.

None of this did much to improve Protestant-Catholic relations in the region, but it did lead to a national celebration. Bonfires were authorized by the king, and the bonfire tradition began the day the plot was foiled.

In “V For Vendetta” the character of Guy Fawkes was re-contextualized, making him a heroic revolutionary, a view that has largely supplanted the historical narrative in the popular imagination.

In the movie, a future British dystopian society, set sometime in the mid 2020s, is being ruled by a violent, fascist, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant society. Into this setting, a shadowy freedom fighter, known only by the name “V”, plots to overthrow the tyrannical corrupt fascist government.

We know - crazy idea that would ever happen, right?

In the film, V kidnaps a young woman named Evey, Her story is interspersed with the story of a lesbian woman named Valerie, who was imprisoned and tortured for her sexuality by the cruel government regime years earlier, and her story echoes with Evey.

In the end, after a final confrontation with government forces, the dying V frees Evey, giving her a train loaded with explosives, and the choice to leave - or to complete his plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament and destroy the fascist government.

Evey, now embracing the idea of revolution, places the train in the city’s underground and watches as the Parliament building explodes, orchestrated by V before his death.

With the government’s leadership decapitated by V & Evey’s actions, the military is unable to respond to the uprising that follows, and a crowd of people wearing Guy Fawkes masks emerge to claim their freedom, and destroy the fascist government that has harmed so many.

While the historical portrait of Guy Fawkes is one more in line with what MAGA believes, that dark and dangerous history has been turned around into a modern story of freedom fighting and the destruction of fascism.

And to that, we can certainly raise a glass with today’s Drink Of The Day, the Autumn Bonfire Cocktail.

Ingredients

Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink: