Filipinos celebrate the New Year according to the Gregorian calendar but with Chinese fireworks. So typically Filipino, we mark time according to a Vatican-decreed calendar, but just to play it safe we abide by ancient Chinese wisdom and frighten away evil spirits with firecrackers (and surround ourselves with round fruits, fill our pockets with money, leave our closet doors open, and prostrate ourselves before all that pagan myth). And whereas in some Western capitals, the major hazard of New Year revelry comes from drunk drivers, hereabouts what keeps hospital emergency wards busy are the victims of firecracker explosions and stray bullets.

The casualty list for 2009 is mercifully low, thanks to the rains that providentially extinguished the usual bonfires that poison the air. Apparently the government has also cut down the foolish use by police and soldiers of their guns — using bullets that taxpayers pay for — to make noise.

But apparently we are still unable to curtail the use of firecrackers despite their prohibitive cost and the active publicity campaign to discourage their use. Fortunately we are evolving wiser, but equally meaningful ways mark to welcome the new year, with the synergistic partnership between local governments and private businesses.

I went to watch the delightful midnight fireworks at The Fort, called the “Taguig Global Countdown and Street Party” sponsored by the city government of Taguig and with the participation of restaurants at The Fort. I understand that in Makati City, Mayor Jojo Binay organized a free concert, a fireworks show, and a million-peso raffle. Likewise, the food-sellers at the nearby Ayala malls participated, with support from the ABS-CBN Foundation’s Sagip Kapamilya program. I have also read there is a similar celebration in the Manila Bay area, organized by the Mall of Asia.

In Boston, the First Night celebration features street performers, jugglers, magicians, and acrobatic acts, and a whole range of music — from organ concerts inside churches to Brazilian drums in open-air plazas, often featuring local artists (and giving them more exposure). Tickets are sold for access to some of the performances, while others are open to everyone. My family savored the First Night festivities for the years we spent there. Sure it will be difficult to replicate some of its features here. For one, outdoor ice sculpting is surely impossible in Manila’s eternal heat — start sculpting the Lion King and in 30 minutes the only ice left will be barely enough for a lion “kuting” [kitten]. But just as surely, we have a rich presence of musical bands of all genres who, I suppose, will be happy to participate.

There are many lessons we can learn. One, Boston’s First Night — 30 years going this year — deliberately aims to refocus the New Year celebration away from alcohol-related activities toward wholesome family outings. Similarly for Manila, we must be deliberate in our effort to discourage people from exploding firecrackers. Boston in fact offers free subway rides to the public for the First Night activities — again, fully conscious that casualties are lower if people simply do not drive.

Two, it is not enough merely to ban firecrackers. We must offer practical alternatives that do not fight and instead harness tradition. (The ban on firing guns, of course, is both imperative and legitimate, and should be enforced. Abroad, people are amazed when I tell them the most primitive way by which we enforce that ban — by placing masking tape in the gun nozzle and having a ranking officer initial that tape.) Americans have learned their lesson with the Prohibition, the attempt to legislate the moral condemnation of alcohol that fostered even more morally contemptible thuggery. We too must learn. Fireworks are categorically banned in Hong Kong and Singapore but these are two tightly spaced cities, and apparently we have more backyards and open spaces for the private use of fireworks. (If you lived in a high-rise condominium, I wonder where you will explode your Judas’ Belt.)

Three, the big fireworks displays by the local governments and the business giants are the way to go. They satisfy the need for noise and carousing, but under the strict regulation by the pyrotechnics experts.

The downside is that this will douse the spontaneity for which Filipinos are renowned, and dampen the participative spirit that enlivens the Filipino fiesta. I suppose the raffles and singing contests in the Makati celebration helped overcome the passivity of mere watchers and applauders. We should find more occasions for “audience-participation” to take the place of the truly participative act of exploding one’s own firecrackers, or to express it more metaphorically, to contribute one’s own sounds to the communal effort to drive away the demons.

But we must also accept the reality that times have changed. To have Beirut-level explosions, we import our fireworks from Taiwan, and given their prices, at some P500 per 10-second shot, I see little prospect for any truly democratic market. Worse, those who can actually afford them merely ask their helpers to explode them in their behalf. The flip-side is equally worrisome. Baliuag-made fireworks, in contrast, are democratically accessible but of erratic quality. Even when it comes to fireworks, Filipinos are bedeviled by the same problems: The cheap is not regulated, the excellent is too expensive, and the rich delegate to the help the joys — and pains — of welcoming the future with a bang.

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