It’s time to have that argument again – about crackers and their role in poisoning the air. But rather than revisit the argument itself, it’s worth asking what is really at work here. Traditionalists defend this form of celebration as essential to the festival; critics cite particulate matter and pediatric asthma. Each side experiences the other as fundamentally unreasonable. What few acknowledge is that this conflict isn’t resolvable – because it isn’t really about crackers at all.

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