Joe Zammit Ciantar walks down memory lane, reminiscing about the little things that made him happy during Christmastime as a young boy and reflects on the true meaning of Christmas.

The Christmas tree with its baubles and colourful, flickering lights stands proudly in our sitting room. The three-in-one softly plays Frank Sinatra’s White Christmas and other joyful carols. On my desk, the list of those to whom I still have to send Christmas greetings and the list of gifts I still need to buy.

These days we go shopping for carefully selected gifts for our dear ones and special friends. We enjoy spending on Christmas; the more we spend, the more we feel happy. But, above all, during this time of the year, we like meeting people − although we have to keep our ‘social distance’ this time round.

We’re happy, smiling… because Christmas is coming even though the pandemic persists.

An unforgettable Christmas gift

My parents, Ġużeppi and Carmela, started building our family during World War II, in Sannat, Gozo. When the war was over and life turned back to ‘normal’ – if one may say so – we moved house to Rabat (we never spoke of Victoria).

I grew up in Rabat. It was in Rabat that my life started taking shape. I was an altar boy at Ta’ Pompej Dominican Sisters’ church, attended Don Bosco’s oratory and I was a scout with the Salesian Boy Scouts’ group, a member of the Legion of Mary and, of course, attended kindergarten, primary school, and the Lyceum.

From the very early years in the primary school in Vajringa Street, I enjoyed drawing and colouring. Then, one day, in the second half of the 1940s, sometime near Christmas, while walking with my mother in Palm Street, I remember looking with wishful eyes at a tin box of water colours, that lay among many other things in ‘Pantu’s’ shop window.

On Christmas morning – a few days later – I could not believe it when I woke up to find a watercolour tin box under my pillow; it was exactly like the one I saw in the shop window, in Palm Street. I also found a colouring book nearby. Baby Jesus knew what I wanted for Christmas. I was always a good boy. My wish was granted. No, it was not Father Christmas then; it was Baby Jesus who appeased my wish. May He come again this Christmas and bring the happiness we very much need.

The Nativity Scene in the church of St Mary, in St Jerome’s Cloister in Lisbon.

A teacher’s present

In the early 1950s, I was in Standard V, in the Primary Boys’ School, in Vajringa Street, Rabat. Our teacher, Carmel Fenech, was an affable man dedicated to the profession. He was one of my favourite teachers whom I recall with affection and great respect. He had a way of teaching that made us love and learn mathematics, especially the voluminous stocks and shares problems, and Maltese. His English lessons were less attractive.

He loved us all; we were some 24 pupils in his class. One day, as Christmas was approaching, we were playing, running and enjoying ourselves during break time. The teachers were gathered in small groups, chatting away while waiting for the bell to ring, signalling the break’s end.

I must have been very close to the teachers with whom Mr Fenech was talking.

“Jien xtrajt xkora lewż” [I bought a sack of hazelnuts],” I overheard Mr Fenech saying.

In the meantime, secretively, my classmate George Grech was collecting three pence from each one of us to buy a Christmas cake for Mr Fenech.

On the last day of school before Christmas break, George stood up and walked towards the teacher, and presented him with the cake. Instantly, Mr Fenech fetched a sack out of nowhere, opened its top and started giving each one of us an equal great number of hazelnuts.

A crib at Lisbon’s cathedral.

I could not believe it when I woke up to find a watercolour tin box under my pillow

We were so thrilled with these nuts. We moved our benches and many of us started playing kastelli (castles) with them. We would build castles, each with a nut placed on three nuts on the ground and, from a distance aim and throw a bubun (a large nut) at them; the ones hit were won by the thrower.

I did not dare play and lose any of them. I was so happy with this gift that I longed to get home and tell my mother what Mr Fenech had given us. I wonder if anybody still knows about the game ‘kastelli’!

I cherish my memories of those Christmas days… I loved helping my father putting up decorations and spending the holidays with my family.

A Christmas crib in a shop window in Porto.

The family crib

In the post-war period, possibly in 1947/8, aged five to six, I started to attend the religion lessons of the MUSEUM Society.

Peppi, a tall slim man, who did not marry, spent his life as a postman going round delivering letters on his 28-inch old bicycle. He was a mature and true soċju (society member) and... lived up Strada Santa Dominica, which was adjacent to our street. He had insisted with my mother to send me for these religion lessons. But the lessons did not last long as soon I started to go to the oratory of St John Bosco, in Pjazza Tomba, also in Rabat. However, I remember the few lessons I attended at the MUSEUM took place sometime before and during Christmas.

We were very young children. On the days before Christmas – during the novena − every time we attended a lesson, our names would be written down on a small piece of paper and thrown in a small box. At the end, the superjur who would had delivered the lesson, would draw up some of the small papers. The lucky ones whose name was drawn up were given a small crib, made of white-waxed squashed paper, with a piece of a wild thyme plant fixed on the rocky-shaped ground, a white goat grazing on one of the ornamental green patches painted on it, and a small half-naked Baby Jesus made of wax, sitting in the middle of the ensemble.

The Christmas crib at the author’s home.

The small piece of paper with my name on it must have kept sticking to the bottom of the box; it was never drawn up. I could never go home happy to tell mother that I won a small crib! But my father was a craftsman and he built us a crib; a crib larger than that given by the MUSEUM superjur, made of brown paper bathed in hot carpenter’s glue, squashed in the shape of rocky ground, with a cave and with several ‘pasturi’ [figurines] made of clay, beautifully coloured to look like a real ħassiela [washer woman], a ragħaj [shepherd], the Three Kings and, of course, Mary and Joseph. There were the cow and the donkey and several sheep, not one. And there was Baby Jesus too, this time lying in a manger. This presepju my father built was so beautiful!

Later, as I grew up, we always set up a crib at home during Christmastime. And when I started to be responsible for ‘making’ the presepju, I used to build it with rough large stones, add real soil to the fields, spread yellow dust [rina] in the cave, plant several pieces of wild thyme and ‘leħjet ix-xiħ’ [old man’s beard] little plants on the rock-like surroundings, and decorate the background with life-like scenery. We never placed political effigies in our cribs like they do in Naples. And there was no Father Christmas, either… only loveable, adorable Baby Jesus. He made our Christmas.

A large Baby Jesus in a church in Guimaraes.

Cribs abroad

My love for cribs persisted over the years and it’s one of the attractions that annually drew me and my wife abroad during this time of year. Of course, we had to scrap our plans this year due to COVID-19.

You find cribs in every Catholic country − in the streets, in squares, in shop windows… but, above all, in churches and cathedrals. Here are some photos I took while on my last Christmas trip in 2018, when we visited Porto, Guimaraes, Coimbra and Lisbon in Portugal. One may appreciate the artistry, the craftsmanship, the colours, the posture of the figures, the drapery but, above all, the love with which the work was executed, all inspired by the birth of Baby Jesus.

The Nativity nucleus, from a crib in a church in Porto.