Nativity Scenes in Malta

Presepju, grotta, pasturi

Presepju (plural presepji), from the Italian presepio, is Maltese for nativity scene. But the word that really matters is grotta: the rocky cave where the Holy Family is placed.

That’s the key thing to remember. An American nativity has a stable, a Dutch one a kerststal, but the Maltese one has a cave, built up in 3D, and every other figure is placed in relation to it: one stands in front of the cave, another leans in to look. Nothing in Provence looks like this.

The figures are called pasturi (singular pastur), from the Italian pastori, “shepherds,” because the shepherds were the first to arrive. The manger is the maxtura.

The Maltese figures

Malta has its own set cast of characters, including some you won’t find among Provençal santons.

• L-għaġeb, “the amazed one,” also called l-adoratur: he stands in front of the cave with his arms flung up to the sky. He stands for simple faith and wonder.
• Ix-xabbatur, “the climber”: he leans in to peer inside the cave. He stands for people who are trying hard to understand what has just happened.
• Ir-rieqed, “the sleeper”: he stands for indifference to the Nativity.
• Ix-xriek, the singers, each with one arm on a neighbor’s shoulder and the other hand cupped behind an ear.
• Ta’ ż-żaqq, the player of the żaqq, the Maltese bagpipe.

Think about that for a moment: indifference has its own place in the scene. It has a name and it’s expected to be there. The Provençal ravi throws up his arms in wonder. The Maltese rieqed sleeps right through it.

The clothes have their own names too: the milsa or beritta, the men’s cap; the ċulqana or xalla, the women’s shawl; the għonnella, the large black Maltese hooded cape.

The ġulbiena

This is the most unusual part of the Maltese nativity, and it’s literally alive.

The ġulbiena isn’t a figure. It’s a plant decoration: seeds (usually common vetch, sometimes wheat or canary grass) sprouted in total darkness. Without light, the shoots grow long and thin and stay perfectly white. They’re then set in clumps around the manger and at the mouth of the cave.

It’s easy to try at home: soak the seeds overnight, spread them on damp cotton in a shallow bowl, put the bowl in a closed cupboard, water every two or three days, and never let it see the light. Plant them in late November, three to five weeks before Christmas.

What a gardener would call a failure (pale, spindly sprouts) is the whole point here. The Church in Malta likes to see a lesson in it: the plant grows in the dark because it’s reaching for the light. The sprouts are nicknamed “angel hair.”

And unlike in Sicily, we found no source linking the Maltese sprouting to Saint Lucy’s Day on December 13.

What it’s made of

The first Maltese nativities were made of local limestone, sometimes with life-size statues in wood or marble. Then came the material that defined the Maltese style: gargazza, the cinders scraped out of bakery bread ovens. It was cheap, porous and looked just like rock. The Maltese cave is literally built from what was left in the village oven.

In the late 1800s came clay, cork, plaster and papier-mâché (kartapesta), the same craft used for the island’s large statues carried in religious processions. One local explanation for the papier-mâché boom is worth repeating: the arrival of coal, and the end of newspaper censorship, which flooded the island with old paper.

Since the 1950s, foam has taken over. A Maltese nativity today is built from foam, wood and small bricks, covered with a homemade plaster coating called ġibs, then painted in browns, yellows and greens with water-based paint. The best ones have doors that open, working lights and running water.

Among the craftsmen whose names have come down to us: Saverio Laferla in the early 18th century, Carlo Darmanin from 1826, Antonio Muscat Fenech of Qormi in 1870, Dumink Pace in Sliema in 1877; closer to our time, Austin Galea and Jesmond Micallef.

How it became universal

A nativity is said to have been set up as early as 1617 at the Dominican church in Rabat, Malta. Even the Maltese nativity society puts it that carefully, and admits no one knows what it looked like. The oldest surviving Maltese nativity is said to date from 1670.

At first the style was Neapolitan. In the early 1800s a Sicilian friar, Benedetto Papale, brought in the Sicilian style, and from there the nativity became truly Maltese, with local dress, windmills and the island’s own trades.

But the reason almost every Maltese home has a nativity today comes down to one man, and a lot of free kits.

Dun Ġorġ Preca (1880–1962), a priest from Valletta, founded the Society of Christian Doctrine in 1907, known in Malta as MUSEUM. He was canonized in 2007 as Malta’s first saint. In 1921, in Ħamrun, he started a Christmas Eve procession with the statue of the Child Jesus, carried by children in costume. Within about twenty years it had spread across the island, and it’s still held on the evening of December 24.

Above all, Preca encouraged children to build their own nativity from scraps and papier-mâché, and local contests followed. Then, in the 1950s, MUSEUM handed out nativity kits to children: more than twenty thousand of them took part, on an island of about three hundred thousand people at the time. That number explains everything.

Malta also has a local specialty: mechanical nativities. The most famous, in Żejtun, has been running since 1947 at the Jesus of Nazareth Institute. A single motor, using pulleys, bicycle chains and film reels, brings to life the Nativity and the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. A generation earlier, in Qormi, Antonio Muscat Fenech ran his on water power.

The Bethlehems of Gozo

The small island of Gozo, home to some thirty thousand people, has two Nativity villages just a few miles apart.

Bethlehem f’Għajnsielem turns about five acres of fields into a first-century village. Some hundred and fifty volunteers in costume bring it to life with old trades, animals, Maltese folklore and stalls selling local treats. Baby Jesus is played by a real baby. The Three Kings only show up in January, following the Church calendar. Admission is free.

In Praesepio, in Nadur, has about a hundred participants in a three-hundred-year-old house and its gardens, in the evening. It’s free too.

The two societies

A lot of articles get this wrong: there isn’t one Maltese nativity society but two, with almost the same name, one on each island.

• Għaqda Ħbieb tal-Presepju Għawdex-Malta, on Gozo, founded in 1985 (the year is part of its official name). Based in San Lawrenz. It’s the more visible today: an annual exhibition at Saint Augustine’s Church in Victoria, opened with a concert, and a nativity exhibition set up even inside Malta’s Parliament building.
• Għaqda Ħbieb tal-Presepju, on Malta, founded in 1986, with more than three hundred members, co-founded by the craftsman Austin Galea. Meetings all year on history and technique, demonstrations, summer building courses, Lenten exhibitions, and an annual exhibition of about a hundred nativity scenes in Valletta. It publishes a newsletter, il-Presepju.

Both belong to the international federation. The Malta society’s website has how-to pages on building and perspective that are worth a look, but the site hasn’t been updated since 2020, so don’t count on it for this season’s dates.