I come from a country where half of the public holidays are related to major Catholic religious feasts. And even if you are staunchly anti-Catholic, you will still enjoy such commodities—we celebrate 10 February as the day when St Paul was shipwrecked on the island, 19 March – St Joseph’s Day, Good Friday, the Feast of St Peter and St Paul, the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and Christmas. But these are not the only feasts that are celebrated in Malta. In an island which is barely 316 km there are about 90 parishes and each celebrate their traditional festa of their patron saint, to which the church is usually dedicated. Festa celebrations start weeks before the actual day, with the decoration and lighting of the village streets. But the Festa proper usually commences on a Monday with the statue of the saint coming out of the glass niche where it is usually kept safe during the year. There are bands playing, fireworks burnt, new clothes bought, and the woman of the house makes sure that the house is well cleaned and decorated and kept open during the week for passers-by to take a peek—always from outside! On each day of that week different aspects of the life of that particular saint are re-enacted; For instance, the mythical slaying of the dragon by St George (in the case of my parish).
On the other hand there are the religious celebrations inside the church with Masses being offered for the dead parishioners, for children, for married couples, and for the sick and the elderly. There is the traditional triduum (on the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) with a priest giving talks over three days, extolling the virtues of the saint, and on Saturday the Te Deum is sung early morning. But the big day is Sunday, which usually starts with the Marċ il-Kbir (the Big March) when the parish band goes around the town, while festa aficionados often get so drunk that they cannot make it back home. (Special crews of people immediately take up the cleaning of the streets from the thousands of beer cans that these aficionados leave behind.) And all this happens while the High Mass with the long-winding panegyric and incense and bells is being sung in the well-adorned-for-the-occasion parish Church.
Brother Carmel Duca MC
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