A FIVE-year-old boy in Iloilo Province’s Component City of Passi will grow up seeing the world through one eye because a homemade firecracker exploded near his face. The device was a boga — illegal, crude, and lethal to common sense — yet familiar enough in many neighborhoods to be shrugged off as “normal” holiday noise. This is where the story stops being about tradition, and starts being a serious discussion on negligence.
Every December, we repeat the same ritual. Authorities issue warnings. Doctors plead. Lists of banned fireworks circulate. And still, children end up burned, blinded, or worse. When a practice reliably injures the youngest among us, the word “accident” becomes a convenient lie. What happened in Passi City was not fate but a preventable harm enabled by adult tolerance.
We are quick to defend the noise as culture — sadya-sadya lang sa Paskwa ukon New Year. But culture does not demand blood. Tradition does not require blindness. When “fun” is powered by illegal devices, handled by children, and excused by grown-ups, it ceases to be heritage. It becomes abuse through negligence.
Children do what children do — they explore, imitate, and test limits. Responsibility rests squarely on adults who buy, allow, or look away. Parents are the first gatekeepers. Communities are the second. Law enforcers are the last line of defense. When all three fail, the child pays the price.
We also need to stop romanticizing danger. Loud explosions are not joy; they are risk amplified by peer pressure and bravado. If celebration requires recklessness, then we have confused noise with happiness. Safer alternatives exist and have always existed — light, music, shared meals, countdowns that do not end in emergency rooms.
Laws banning devices like boga exist because years of data have shown the damage these contraptions cause. Enforcement that arrives only after injuries is not enforcement at all. Nor is public health messaging effective if it is treated as background noise until tragedy strikes.
One child losing sight should be enough to force a reckoning. If it isn’t, then we must admit a harsher reality: that our tolerance for harmful “traditions” is greater than our commitment to protect children. That is not culture but utter failure.
The holidays are meant to celebrate life. When celebration costs a child his future, the question answers itself. The noise must stop — before another child pays for our excuses.
