Incidents of firecracker accidents took a nosedive this yuletide according to police and hospital records. The observation is clearly conspicuous in contrast to previous celebrations where the people experience explosive evenings of firecracker frenzies. This, despite the subtler campaign against the use of firecrackers in the merrymaking on Christmas eve. It could be recalled that in previous years, the health department in coordination with other agencies like the police and the education department, had to go into an intensified campaign to remind people about the real hazards of firecrackers. The campaign this year was not that intensive but the effect was tremendous if the police and hospital records would be taken as reliable indicators.
Many people had long decided to forego with the non-essentials of the Christmas celebration due to the hard grind of poverty. The impoverished masses that had long been living in the quagmire of financial nothingness were taking the celebration in stride to the extreme extent of sleeping past Christmas midnight with empty stomachs. These are the people that could tell the drumbeaters of the government’s campaign against poverty about what is truly felt by the poor masses of the present economic condition. Surely, these poor masses could never profess what government had been showing in make-believe propaganda on national television, radio and print media about economic progress and development.
People went back to the basics not on account of any campaign to rid themselves of firecrackers. The riddance from firecrackers is neither a success in law enforcement banning the sale of the items. It too is not a result of the information drive that any government agency may have taken to prevent people from engaging in the dangerous frenzy of igniting firecrackers. If there was silence in the Christmas eve celebration, government efforts against firecrackers had less to do with it. While there might have been some contributory effects of the reminders and the threats about blasted body parts and imprisonment in case of apprehension.
The modest celebration of Christmas owes chiefly to the economic condition that people are in. Even the big businesses that rake in huge profits over the year could not afford to part of their gains to greet their customers and patrons with a yuletide present. There is scarcity of the usual least gifts that people get from stores and business establishments in past years. Even the ordinary calendar could hardly be availed by customers this time. Clearly, the economic condition, the true and real situation that is diametrically opposed to the one portrayed by government on national television ads, is the main Christmas silencer.
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