Editing Bonfire (section)

===United States===
[[File:Bonfire on Mississippi River levee St. James Parish Louisiana.jpg|thumb|upright|A bonfire burns during a night event in the US]]
In [[New England]], on the night before the [[Fourth of July]], towns competed to build towering pyramids, assembled from [[hogsheads]], barrels and [[casks]]. They were lit at nightfall, to usher in the celebration. The highest were in [[Salem, Massachusetts]], composed of as many as forty tiers of barrels. The practice flourished in the 19th and 20th centuries, and can still be found in some [[New England]] towns.<ref name="appelbaum">{{cite web |title=The Night Before the Fourth |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/07/the-night-before-the-fourth/241259/ |publisher=The Atlantic |date=1 July 2011 |access-date=4 November 2011}}</ref>

On Christmas Eve in Southern [[Louisiana]] bonfires are built along the [[Mississippi River]] [[levee]]s to light the way for [[Santa Claus|Papa Noël]] as he moves along the river in his [[pirogue]] ([[Cajun]] [[canoe]]) pulled by eight alligators. This tradition is an annual event in [[St. James Parish, Louisiana|St. James Parish]], Louisiana.<ref>[http://www.stjamesparish.com/local/localinfo/BONFIRES/Bonfir1.htm Stjamesparish.com] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080820060158/http://www.stjamesparish.com/local/localinfo/BONFIRES/Bonfir1.htm |date=20 August 2008 }}</ref>

(See [[Aggie Bonfire]])
One of the oldest traditions at [[Texas A&M University]] involves the building of a bonfire by students to be burnt before their annual game against [[The University of Texas]]. The tradition began in 1909 as little more than a burning trash pile. Eventually students began clearing land in the area, by hand, to harvest thousands of logs needed for its construction. In 1969 [[Aggie Bonfire]] set a Guinness world record for tallest bonfire at 109 feet. In 1999, there was an [[1999 Aggie Bonfire collapse|accident]] where the stack collapsed during construction, killing 12 people and injuring 27 others. The accident led to the university to no longer sanction the building of Bonfire. Since 2002, the student-sponsored group Student Bonfire began building an annual bonfire in the spirit of the original.