On New Year's Eve my husband and I ate dinner at a  restaurant right on the beach here in Maui, Hawaii.  As soon as it got dark, children, teenagers, and families started shooting off fireworks in the sand right on the beach in front of us. It was a fireworks extravaganza.   I should have realized fireworks were legal here when the day before while at Costco, I saw every other cart had a five foot long box of every kind of fireworks you could imagine--sparklers, firecrackers, Roman candles, cherry bombs, etc.  More fireworks woke me up at midnight that night.  Pow! Bang! Pop!  So what's the fascination with fire and noise on New Year's Eve or the Fourth of July? Exactly what is the appeal?  Is it the noise that breaks us out of our calm day-to-day reverie?  Are we thrilled by fire just as much as our cave dwelling ancestors were?  Fascinated by its power and might?  Do we enjoy being close to danger which makes the heart pump faster, so we feel  alive? To some extent, yes is probably the answer to all of these possiblities. However, I know that fire is part of the mystery of life.  While we understand the science of fire now, unlike  our ancestors,  fireworks still provide us, like them,  with a few minutes of magic.  Like so many things, such as flowers blooming or babies being born, knowlege has not obscured the magic of it.