While Minecraft's upcoming January update version 1.5 churns away in the cauldrons of Mojang's most diligently studious wizards, a smaller update (version 1.4.6) is being coded in parallel for release sometime before Christmas.
Available to more adventurous adventurers now as Snapshot 12w49a, version 1.4.6 adds the ability to craft fireworks and enchanted books that can then be used to enchant items. Various bug fixes are also bundled with the patch, tough the Snapshot version of 1.4.6 is not itself guaranteed to be bug free.
The most important part of all of this, however, is that skulls can be added to the firework formula in order to make them look like Creepers when they explode, which is ironic and wonderful, as seen above.