The return of Easter celebrations this year has brought joy for devotees following a two-year hiatus caused by COVID, as well as quirky traditions – such as the hooded penitents dragging wooden crosses down the streets on Good Friday.

Several such traditions, some of which were forgotten or modified along the years, have luckily been documented by writers and photographers.

Among these is the replacement of joyous bell ringing with the monotonous Lenten wooden clappers (ċuqlajta) on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, something that has not only been documented on film but also audibly recorded for posterity.

The sound of the clapper is, in fact, among over 5,000 catalogued recordings of bells chiming in various feasts, seasons and other events throughout the year, collected by Rayden Mizzi, who recently donated his collection to a National Archives project called Memorja. 

However, there are some traditions – such as the burning of olive branches handed out on Palm Sunday to ward off the evil eye at home – that have been lost in the dark abyss of time, leaving no trace in archived film.

And this is why, for five years, a team of archivists has been scrambling to capture as much information as it can for the online repository Memorja.

Memorja is a collection of recent Maltese national and public memory, hosting hundreds of recollections dating back to the 1920s. Apart from audio files and images, Memorja also hosts interviews about various subjects – from shipbuilding to migration and World War II events to herbal medicine.

Over the past few years, archivists have interviewed people and documented photos, footage and artefacts linked to the interviews, with project administrator James Baldacchino noting that the endeavour is a race against time.

The team is hoping to document as many memories as possible before the elderly generation dies off and takes such recollections with them to the grave. 

Limited Holy Week visuals

Baldacchino, in fact, notes that so far, visual material linked to Holy Week and Easter is very limited.

Most notably, Memorja is in possession of a few photos depicting scenes from the Good Friday Ta’ Ġieżu (Nativity of Our Lady) procession in Valletta shot by British serviceman Roger Davis 72 years ago.

Davis spent over a year in Malta photographing snippets of social life on the island during his deployment here. Hundreds of his photos, including negatives, were donated to the archives by Phil Pisani.

But what the Memorja collection lacks in visual material about Holy Week, it makes up in footage and photos of everyday life in Malta, including children swimming, fishermen gathered for lunch, Holy Communion parties and countryside walks dating to the 1960s.

So far, visual material linked to Holy Week and Easter is very limited

“A couple of years ago, we were very lucky to come across a very diverse and visual collection made up of home videos and over a thousand photos shot between the 1880s and the 1980s that belonged to the Mifsud Bonnici family,” Baldacchino said.

“The material was donated after I interviewed the late Maurice Mifsud Bonnici, who had a dark room and developed his own photos. Interestingly, our interview with him also shed light on a completely different topic: migration.

“During these interviews with Maurice, his wife Loulou provided us with recollections of her mother’s accounts of seeking refuge from Smyrna, known as Izmir in modern day Turkey. Loulou’s mother fled fighting in the city with her family in 1922 and two decades later, Loulou herself fled bombings in Sliema.

“Her family initially moved to Lija, and eventually Dingli, where they rented a cave from a local farmer.”

Local war refugees

Another war refugee whose accounts have been recorded for posterity is 99-year-old Ċensinu Caruana.

“Ċensinu, originally from Senglea, is one of the very first people we interviewed for the Memorja project. His family first fled Senglea for Siġġiewi in June 1940, only to return to the harbour city a few months later. In January 1941, the Caruanas again fled

Senglea for Siġġiewi, where the family lived for over a decade.]

“Luckily enough I interviewed someone else from the same village, who it later transpired was a friend of Ċensinu’s: Edgar Pace.

“Just like Ċensinu, Edgar provided us with photos of the area, and Memorja is now in possession of two sets of pictures from two different angles showing the same group of people in Għar Lapsi.

“Ċensinu and Edgar’s families had a completely different background, reflecting the reality of several people at that time. The relocation of harbour refugees in rural areas, in fact, brought to the surface two contrasting realities: on one hand, you had people who could afford socks and, on the other hand, people who didn’t even have shoes.

“Ċensinu himself recalls the culture shock that the move brought him and vividly remembers barefoot children, women clad in għonnella and the absence of a sewage system.”

Baldacchino noted that such snapshots of a long-lost era are only being made available to the public thanks to the goodwill of people.

If you have any visual material, artefacts or a story to tell, you can meet part of the Memorja team next Sunday at a the Siġġiewi local council between 8am and 1pm.

www.memorja.com/

Malta's hidden treasures

This article is being published as part of a series called Malta’s hidden treasures, a collaboration between the National Archives of Malta and Times of Malta. The project, forming part of the European Digital Treasures co-funded by the European Union through the Creative Europe programme, allows readers to gain an insight into Maltese history, society through our archives.

You can discover more at the National Archives of Malta headquartered at the historical building of Santo Spirito in Rabat and other archives. If you are unable to visit the archives in person, you can access an online oral and visual archive on www.memorja.com.

More information about the National Archives on 2145 9863 or customercare.archives@gov.mt.

More from the series:

When a Royal Opera House competition divided the country

When Maltese patriots, intellectuals were kicked out of their own country

The women raped and murdered by men in Malta 300 years ago

When 2,000 children celebrated Christmas on a British aircraft carrier

When Malta Railway steamed from Mdina to Valletta in 25 minutes

The tin ring and bloody parchment at the archives

When the British Empire waged war on the Maltese goat