If the real shopping has all but migrated to Sliema, the same cannot be said of the Christmas spirit broadly defined. I’d say Valletta is still the better bet in that respect.

The making of a crib represents a kind of ritual taming of the landscape, a victory of civilisation over wilderness- Mark-Anthony Falzon

There are a few snags. I think it lacks ‘warm’ focal points for example, and the effect of the atmospheric lighting is quite undone by the din blared out by those awful speakers plastered all over the place (shouldn’t Christmas be about a peopled silence, I wonder?).

Compensation comes in the form of things like the Għaqda Ħbieb tal-Presepju’s annual exhibition, put up this year as always in a grubby set of rooms round the corner from the church of St Francis.

I figure the organisation costs the Għaqda about as much as a bag of mince pies. It reminds me of the ‘hobby’ exhibitions (tropical fish, song birds, photographs, and so on) at St John’s annexe that so delighted me and a generation of children.

But never mind, it’s the soul that matters. Of which the Għaqda seems to have an ample supply. Where else can you get a free guided tour by a man (Desmond in my case) who can talk about cribs as if he were describing the great gallery at the Louvre?

By way of a disclaimer, what follows is not really about what one might call grand traditions. Not that there’s anything wrong with these, as anyone who has seen Fr Edgar Vella’s astonishingly beautiful Neapolitan presepio will know.

But I find myself rather more charmed by the sort of thing that the average enthusiast might come up with in a few days’ blitz of crumpled newspaper, glue, and bits of polystyrene all over the kitchen floor. That works fine for me, in many ways.

First, cribs tend to create a contrast between cold and warmth. They do this by bringing together two elements. The first is usually bare ‘rock’ and the second some sort of cosiness – a building or the nativity cave itself. The best examples on show in Valletta do this very well indeed.

In this sense the making of a crib represents a kind of ritual taming of the landscape, a victory of civilisation over wilderness. I suppose too that the Christmas spirit plays heavily on the themes of warmth and cold, darkness and light. I learned this two years ago on a trip to Göttingen when a long train journey across bleak and frozen countryside brought me to a Glühwein-guzzling Christmas market in the town square.

Second, cribs represent the pleasure of simulation. Desmond told me how it had taken him several years to get the colour of the rock right. “My first crib turned out a hideous orange”, he said, “it’s all about learning how colours work on materials”. There’s something here along the lines of the ‘miniature Switzerland’ which tourists seem to like so much, or captains of industry secretly spending their money on train or battle sets.

The Għaqda people take simulation seriously. There’s the standard moving crib (complete with singing birds in this case) and one Charles Gauci even has a stab at perspective by using graded sizes to create a sense of depth.

Third, to make a crib is to make a landscape. Not any old landscape that is, but an ideal one in many ways. There is the element of nostalgia for a ‘lost’ landscape, the same feeling that makes Richard Ellis’s photographs and Gianni’s paintings so popular. Nature Trust people will kill me for this but I quite see why snips of thyme double as carob trees.

It’s also an ideal landscape in that the crib-maker often gets to build a world in their own image – a village, say, as they would have it and usually in contrast with villages as they actually exist. The good people of Għajnsielem, who at Christmas build a village (‘Betlehem’) even as they proceed to dismantle what’s left of the real one during the rest of the year, will understand me.

Fourth, cribs invite us to look closer for hidden spaces and objects. Rather like looking at a painting by Jan Brueghel, and equally pleasantly. There’s at least one crib in Valletta that does this splendidly. Joey Falzon (no relation I’m afraid) starts with the background and works his way towards the front, adding caves and nooks as he goes.

The result is a palimpsest of dimly-lit spaces which gradually open up to the viewer. Falzon’s work is actually many cribs, depending on which angle one looks.

The fifth element is humour and creativity. The latter has a lot to do with deciding what to include, composition, and use of materials.

The Għaqda has a penchant for cribs made from unlikely materials, I was told. This year’s include glass, cork, pine tree bark, and pine cones.

That there should be a humorous side to this rather follows. One crib (the maker’s name escapes me) shows a familiar green bendy bus rambling down a hill towards a roundabout.

I missed the għaġeb tal-presepju, but I suppose he was away telling the Prime Minister what to do. I’ll have to make do with my caganer, a traditional figure of Catalan cribs that shows a man responding to the call of nature.

The point is that I left the Għaqda’s shoestring exhibition with half a mind to dig out our set of old pasturi and build my own cave complex next year. I’ll be damned if that isn’t worth a thousand shopping malls.

mafalzon@hotmail.com