Clinch Valley News

CHRISTMAS TRAGEDIES.

(Staunton News Leader.)

Christmas eve and Christmas day piled up the usual quota of tragedies in the south from the use of explosives and, as usual, children have been the chief victims. A lighted firecracker tossed into a can of gunpowder in a Kentucky home cost the lives of four children, from three to fourteen years of age. A dynamite cap exploding in the hands of a deaf-mute lad blinds him for life. A Roman candle thoughtlessly lighted in a fireworks store in a Georgia town results in the fatal burning of four young people. Many other casualties of a similar nature have been reported.

It is strange that the one high day of the year, the day the first meaning of which is "peace on earth" and which was first ushered in by celestial music, should be marred by the discordant noises of clanging bells and nerve-racking explosions, a torture to the sick and a menace to life, limb and property. Such conditions are foreign to a religious anniversary like Christmas and should be banished from the south, the only section of the country where they are encouraged or tolerated.

It is said that the noisy celebration of Christmas with explosives was introduced years ago by some colored people who, on a visit to the north, had witnessed a Fourth of July celebration and who thought it would be a fine way in which to put pep into the Christmas observance. White adolescents quickly saw in the practice an opportunity for excessive indulgence of their love of noise, and the custom soon became general throughout the south.

But, whatever its origin, it is time this highly inappropriate and dangerous custom should be abandoned. The use of fireworks is dangerous to the users, dangerous to other people, dangerous to property. Especially is the use of these explosives, including the huge Roman candle and the treacherous cannon-cracker, unsafe in the hands of children. As long as their sale is licensed for the benefit of those who put profit first, individuals who wish to make a little more money by handling them, we may expect to reap an annual harvest of Christmas tragedies—maiming, blinding, killing and destroying property.

Few progressive cities now permit the use of explosives on the streets or in other public places. We need to go a step farther and forbid by legislative enactment the sale and use of firecrackers altogether. Let us cease to distort the spirit of the day and return to the old-fashioned Christmas. There are plenty of ways in which young people can have "fun" without shooting firecrackers and raising pandemonium on the most sacred day of the year.