  In Carroway's Dictionary of Symbols and Their Analysis, the entry for 'hat' includes the desire to protect or keep oneself hidden. The bottom of the entry said, 'see also beard and armour. ' A cherished hat, however, can sometimes usefully be seen as a soul since it houses the most cherished (symbolically speaking) part of the body.
'Fire' was a four page entry and there was no 'barbecue fire' sub-heading. Most of the entries have to do with hell, although many were also concerned with the transformative "phoenix" aspect of fire. Under the aristocratic title of an 'Earl,' Carroway concludes by a process of inverse transference, given an Earl's lofty position in the social milieu, that sometimes the best symbolic translation of 'Earl' can mean 'little buddy. ' The act of 'throwing' something was almost universally seen as a sign of love, eg. rice at a wedding, or a pitch at a ballgame.
The exception here was the throwing of incendiary devices. Given all of this, if somebody were to have stripped off somebody else's hat and tossed it on a barbecue flame, Carroway's analysis would suggest that a proper symbolic translation of that act would read something like this: Little Buddy, Sorry I put your hat on the barbecue coals last night. I was attempting to transform our souls in a phoenix-esque manner and burn through the barriers that divided our love -- including drunken inarticulateness. Glad that's cleared up. 
