It’s a cold Wednesday night on Arthur’s Seat, obscured under a dense cloud of fog and smoke sporadically lit up by exploding rockets and fireworks. The shadows of young revellers drinking bottles of beer, smoking cigarettes and bending to set off their pyrotechnics before watching them with craned necks as they light up the sky, can be seen dotted along the Crags – each blast eliciting a roar from its onlookers.

Tonight is Bonfire Night.

Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Night, celebrates the anniversary of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot, which aimed to blow up parliament in 1605. Attempted by a group English Roman Catholic conspirators led by Robert Catesby, the plan was foiled when Fawkes aroused suspicion while guarding the gunpowder. An attentive guard noticed that he was wearing a coat, boots and spurs indoors – as if about to make a very fast escape.

Nowadays the anniversary is marked by explosions and fire, with burning effigies of Fawkes thrown in for good measure. However, in this apathetic age, not only is it becoming increasingly unclear what younger generations are celebrating, but in an ironic echo of the events being commemorated, 5 November is increasingly being marked with interventions by law enforcement.

Last year a total of 1160 people were injured, with more than half of these under the age of 17. 590 of these took place at private firework parties. No official figures have been published yet on this year's number of injuries, but The Edinburgh Evening News reported an increase in call-outs by both the Lothian and Borders Police and Fire Emergency Services.

Conservative MP for Kettering, Phillip Hollobone told The Journal: “Every year hundreds of children are injured by fireworks, and while there is strong support for organised firework displays, there is growing concern about the antisocial use of fireworks and the distress they cause to both people and animals.”

Other than injuries, tax payers' money is also spent each year on extra emergency services to deal with the dangers of Bonfire Night. This year, 50 extra police officers were assigned to patrol the city, dealing with a total of 97 call-outs. Lothian and Borders Police Chief Inspector Stevie Neils, of the Safer Communities Department, told The Journal that police patrols focused primarily on residential areas rather than open public spaces where "responsible adults [were] not causing any danger."

“Our biggest problem in previous years has been people who are underage... setting fireworks off in built up areas and housing estates where the danger is that the fireworks will land in peoples homes,” he said.

Despite being set on fire two years running, Holyrood Park is not on the polices’ agenda as hotspots for anti-social behavior, or dangerous use of fireworks.

“Since 5 October, the police, the fire brigade and the city council have been monitoring the build up of bonfires across Edinburgh. Those that are deemed to be a potential hazard, depending on the height of the bonfire, and also on the vicinity of surrounding buildings and houses, can be removed by the council… which I think certainly helps cut down the number of potentially dangerous bonfires in areas that are built up,” says Mr Neils.

The number of illegal bonfires, police arrests and injuries are all increasing steadily year on year; it's therefore no surprise that the laws surrounding private use of fireworks are increasingly becoming somewhat of a legislative hot potato.

Mr Hollobone, who has campaigned for an outright ban of the retail sale of fireworks, raised the debate in the House of Commons last week.

Though laws around the retail sale of fireworks to under age people, as well as the use of fireworks in public places have stiffened since 2001, many argue that more needs to be done to curb the number of injuries reported each year.

Mr Hollobone told The Journal: “There are always alternative solutions to an outright ban on the retail sale of fireworks, but an outright ban would be the most effective.

"Too many people get hurt including young children and pets. Also the use of fireworks generally causes and increase in anti-social behavior. Therefore the disadvantages of the use of fireworks outweigh the advantages.”

Controversial or not, the huddles of young people gathered on the Crags have come out with one very important thing in common: a love of fireworks. Whether or not it’s a celebration of the foiling of the gunpowder plot, or another week-day boozing, each fuse that flickers and sparkles, each blast that paints the sky and each explosion that reverberates against the rock is hailed by excited applause and screams of glee.

University of Edinburgh student, Gerard Kerr, 18, said: “I’m not sure if everyone here is out to celebrate the fire works or that it’s Guy Fawkes Night. But I’m here tonight to celebrate just the fireworks.

"I like the whole atmosphere of the thing, of people getting together, having a drink and firing rockets into the sky. What better way to enjoy an evening.”

The patrolling police cars that come and go on the main road are routinely the target of flying fireworks. Once the police cars have gone, the groups turn on each other, firing rockets from group to group and shouting obscenities. Though the atmosphere isn’t exactly aggressive, when the flying balls of flame hit their targets, people scatter shrieking, and then promptly fire one back.

Stuart McAlpine, 19, of the University of Edinburgh, said: “Guy Fawkes Night is us burning him on a bonfire because that’s what they did. He tried to blow up the parliament so he was seen as an enemy so every Guy Fawkes Night we burn him.

“But every year we always twist it to be, if he did manage to blow up the parliament it would’ve been something of a victory. So the celebration means different things to different people depending on where you stand politically.

“We know its dangerous but it doesn’t matter if someone loses a limb – we’re having fun,” says McAlpine.

The nightly blasts of fireworks have come to an end, as people let loose the last of their explosives into the sky. The debate for a total ban on the retail sale of fireworks is postponed for yet another year.

Likewise, the debate on the modern meaning, if any, of Bonfire Night.