It’s autumn. Yet the leaves are still on the trees. We are still enjoying warm weather with annoying south easterly winds that cause a heavy downfall of dew during the night, wet the streets, and haze cars’ windscreens. It’s raining hard, but it’s not cold yet.

My orange tree in the front garden is full of fruit – not so large as in previous years; they are slowly turning into ripe oranges and my wife enjoys seeing them like large Christmas bulbs among the thick foliage of the over 50-year-old tree. Yet, we have already started tasting their 12 grams of sugar, and their vitamins A and C.

In Santa Luċija, where I live, the local council has already put up the scanty poor decorations that are supposed to lighten our streets with some festive colour and brighten us in this dull atmosphere created by the fear that COVID-19 is still strong and its victims are again increasing by the day.

However, the rumbling of the large industrial machines that have been digging, flattening and asphalting the ‘ring road’ for months, still goes incessantly on. We have put up enough with the louder reverberations of huge trucks and machines that helped construct the Santa Luċija roundabout, tunnel, and road network projects which had been going on for months without end, filling the air with an unpleasant smell and dust that fell and carpeted my front and back gardens, and filled our chests.

In some of the apartments’ windows, several Christmas sets of small colourful bulbs flicker in the night darkness which has taken over the light of our summer long days.

And on the edge of all roundabouts the embellishing authorities have planted linear fixed designs representative of the festive season.

My children and grandchildren have earnestly prepared their lists of wishful presents

Yes, Christmas is coming. The writing is on the wall. Shop owners, thirsty for business to pick up after the dry trade times during these last months of the pandemic, are doing their best to decorate the interior with emphasis on their windows in the hope of attracting some of the few commuters that dare walk the otherwise empty streets, in the shopping areas of Valletta, Sliema, Ħamrun, and other places, in search for presents.

Some lonely shop has already started playing Christmas carols – loudly enough to be heard all over around – optimistic of awakening the high spirits which in normal years helped fill the kitty, and everybody was happy.

Up to two weeks ago or so, the number of COVID-19 victims in Malta stood quite acceptable, always below 20. But now, with the approach of the joyful yuletide, and more relaxation of the stringent protective precautions, the number has been on the increase. We are not united in sticking to the same restrictive measures in fighting the pandemic, and those who suffer do so at the expense of those who are slack or do not care.

Usually, at this time of the year, priests saying Holy Mass in Malta and Gozo invite us to pray for the much-needed heavenly rain. This year we have had much of it, already. The amount of heavy rainfalls that poured down persistently have watered our thirsty fields, at the same time they caused damage to rubble walls, fields, and even cars.

But Christmas is coming; it will come as in previous Decembers, all along these last two centuries.

My greengrocer Adrian has already started to sell bright red flowered poinsettias and take orders for the Christmas day lunch capon or turkey.

And my children and grandchildren have earnestly prepared their lists of wishful presents, each of us in the family may choose from, to give as a Christmas present.

And Baby Jesus?

We are supposed to be preparing ourselves for His birthday. That is precisely what our Maltese ‘Milied’ – from Arabic verb ‘wiled’ ‘to be born’ – infers.

But the crave for money is taking place of our desire for peace, for unity amongst us, for the happiness and joy Christmas used to fill our hearts with.

Could Christmas of yesteryear happen again? Could Baby Jesus still make us happy?

In our children and their children lies the hope of a sincere happy Christmas, with Baby Jesus amongst us all.

I want no presents for Christmas. I only wish that Baby Jesus whose birth we are going to celebrate within the next few weeks, helps us realize that the true happiness comes only from Him, and we cherish it only in Him, and with Him among us.

I want a truly happy Christmas.