As usual, my wife and I stayed up late on Christmas Eve getting everything ready for the kids in the morning. By the time we got to bed, it was a little after midnight.
Almost as soon as we closed our eyes, loud noises outside made our 3-year-old son wake up crying. When I went to investigate, I saw people down the street whispering in Spanish and setting off huge, obnoxious fireworks.
I told them to stop, that people were trying to sleep. One woman protested, “But it’s Christmas Eve!” I said that what they were doing was illegal. They said they would stop.
Soon after, another barrage of fireworks detonated. No more went off after that, either because the neighbors came to their senses, or because by that point I had called the police.
The next day, I looked up “Christmas, fireworks, and midnight” online. Turns out it’s a fairly common practice…in Latin America.
So much for “Silent Night.”
Gently Hew Stone 
You were being racist and imperialistic. White American bastards.
It’s also a very common practice in the south… you might want to investigate other Christmas traditions to expand your knowledge base. We loved setting off fireworks for both Christmas and New Year’s and we always got firecrackers in our Christmas stockings. :-)