Lent and Car­ni­val in Malta (2017)

Dimech takes an in-depth look at the mean­ing be­hind Lent and car­ni­val in Malta

The term ‘Car­ni­val’ con­sists of two words Carne (meat) and Vale (you may). In other words, car­ni­val means, the time pe­riod when one can eat meat. It im­plies a time of eat­ing and a time of fast­ing. In the Catholic Church and the Chris­tian Church in gen­eral, fast­ing usu­ally takes the di­men­sion of fast­ing from meat and/or meat derivates. The car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties, pre­ced­ing lent are a time of rev­el­ling and joy­ous cel­e­bra­tion and some­times ex­cesses.

Car­ni­val is cel­e­brated ap­prox­i­mately be­fore the 40 to 50 days of fast­ing from Ash Wed­nes­day up to Easter Sun­day.

Set­ting the Easter Date

Car­ni­val is cel­e­brated ac­cord­ing to when Good Fri­day falls and this de­pends on the po­si­tion of the moon and whether it is full moon or not. The date of Easter Day is usu­ally the first Sun­day af­ter the first Full Moon oc­cur­ring on or af­ter the March equinox.

Easter Sun­day cel­e­brates the Chris­tian be­lief of Je­sus Christ’s res­ur­rec­tion. The Easter date is set around the time of the March Equinox.

The March equinox co­in­cides with Easter Sun­day and hol­i­days that are re­lated to it. These hol­i­days do not fall on a fixed date in the Gre­go­rian cal­en­dar, or the Ju­lian cal­en­dar, which is still used by many Ortho­dox Chris­tian churches.

This year car­ni­val has been cel­e­brated be­tween 24 and 28 of Fe­bru­ary

The Chart (with Mal­tese equiv­a­lent) be­low helps to put to­gether the var­i­ous dates tied with Lent for 2017.

The sig­nif­i­cance of Lent and the ori­gins of Car­ni­val

In the Old Tes­ta­ment we find that there were cer­tain pa­gan tra­di­tions that the Jews learned from other tribes that they came in con­tact with. For in­stance the Baby­lo­ni­ans and the Egyp­tians had dif­fer­ent idols which they pa­raded on carts to cel­e­brate fes­tiv­i­ties tied with god­desses of fer­til­ity. Fa­mil­iar names of such god­desses were Mar­duk and Isis.

Since our Chris­tian faith has Judeo roots, sev­eral of these feasts were taken on by the West­ern Chris­tian tra­di­tion in an at­tempt to Chris­tianise them. As a mat­ter of fact, the whole con­cept of car­ni­val and lent is to cel­e­brate the pas­sage from win­ter (suf­fer­ing of Christ) to Res­ur­rec­tion Sun­day (the time of a new life lib- er­ated from death and suf­fer­ing) and a new life in the Res­ur­rected Christ.

In many ways, Lent is about dy­ing: dy­ing to self as you em­brace the cross of Christ; dy­ing to the world as you live as a cit­i­zen of heaven; dy­ing to ma­te­rial wants and sen­sual plea­sures that you may be raised by God to new heights; dy­ing to fleet­ing things that you may take hold of eter­nal life. And all along, it is God who sus­tains you, gives you strength and di­rects your path. Lent, then, is a jour­ney into the won­drous and beau­ti­ful heart of God.

There seems to be no doc­u­mented ref­er­ence for Car­ni­val in the pe­riod be­fore 1535 and it ap­pears that Car­ni­val was cel­e­brated the first time un­der Grand Mas­ter Pi­etro del Ponte who was the sec­ond Grand Mas­ter of the Or­der in Malta. This means that car­ni­val was cel­e­brated 5 years af­ter the Knights came to Malta.

Car­ni­val in Malta seems to have been given a huge drive for­ward when un­der the Grand Mas­ter La Val­letta, the use of masks were al­lowed in car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties. This cus­tom was taken from the crew of a large fleet of Chris­tian ships that sought shel­ter in Malta due to in­clement weather and ill­ness on board as they were en route to Tripoli. The crew con­sist­ing of of­fi­cers and sailors landed in Malta and ex­hib­ited their masks to the Mal­tese as they rev­elled in the streets of Val­letta. Among the crew were some of the aris­to­cratic elite of Europe (Vene­tians and French) and it was a long-stand­ing tra­di­tion that the elite of Europe used masks in their par­ties and cel­e­bra­tion of car­ni­val.

As time passed, car­ni­val was be­come more and more pop­u­lar and spec­tac­u­lar event un­der the Knights and was firmly en­grained in Mal­tese cul­ture and na­tional fes­tiv­ity, reach­ing a peak un­der the Por­tugh­ese Grand Mas­ter Pinto (1741-1773).

Un­der Bri­tish rule car­ni­val’s pop­u­lar­ity de­creased. For in­stance, in 1846 the Car­ni­val ri­ots caused much dis­tress to the lo­cal pop­u­lace as the Gov­er­nor of the time, Sir Pa­trick Stu­art tried to stop the use of the masks in car­ni­val. This in­ter­fer­ence was met with ri­ot­ing and the po­lice had to in­ter­vene in or­der to avoid an es­ca­la­tion. Fi­nally, the rev­ellers were al­lowed to use masks and things pro­ceeded nor­mally and with­out fur­ther in­ci­dents.

A dra­matic event that mer­its men­tion is the car­ni­val tragedy of 11 Fe­bru­ary 1823. Dur­ing car­ni­val chil­dren were treated to a ra­tion of bread by the church of Ta’ Ġieżu. These were times of ex­treme poverty and a piece of bread was seen as a bless­ing for starv­ing chil­dren in those days. The sheer num­ber of boys who flocked for bread made it im­pos­si­ble for all to en­ter the con­vent from the side street and as the boys were go­ing up the stairs the door was closed by the sex­ton in an at­tempt to prevent more boys com­ing in and in the stam­pede that fol­lowed, the boys were trapped in­side the con­vent and there was no es­cape as they were who were held in by the closed doors. Over 100 boys per­ished, many of them chok­ing to death as their bod­ies pressed upon each other.

An in­ter­est­ing tra­di­tion that was added to car­ni­val was the Kukkanja. It was in­tro­duced in 1721 un­der Grand Mas­ter Zon­dadari. Even­tu­ally this tra­di­tion lost its pop­u­lar­ity as it was not much en­cour­aged by the Bri­tish. Beams were set up in front of the Palace Square in Val­letta and hung to these beams were all sorts of live an­i­mals and other foods such as smoked ham, cheese, bas­kets with fresh eggs and all sorts of ed­i­bles. It was a game of who ar­rives first and grabs as much food as pos­si­ble. On top of this heap of foods was a large globus, cov­ered with vel­vet, on which the em­blem flag of the Grand Mas­ter was erected. The first per­son to grab this flat would take it to the Grand Mas­ter and the car­ni­val would be of­fi­cially in­au­gu­rated. The globus would be burst open and a num­ber of doves would fly out.

One can imag­ine the sort of rough, rowdy and rude at­mos­phere that would en­sue with shout­ing and screams to take as much food home as pos­si­ble. The live an­i­mals were help­less as they were torn off the Kukkanja.

The Qar­cilla was an­other piece of car­ni­val drama rep­re­sent­ing a mock mar­riage with folk­loris­tic and hu­morists over­tones as the con­tract of mar­riage was read out with all sorts of funny ex­plica­tives.

King Car­ni­val ruled supreme and this usu­ally was the float that was the main fo­cus of at­ten­tion. Other tra­di­tions as­so­ci­ated with car­ni­val in Malta were the po­lit­i­cal floats with all sorts of satires that poked fun at po­lit­i­cal fig­ures both lo­cal and for­eign. Many car­ni­val floats were also a means of pro­mot­ing sev­eral prod­ucts such as cig­a­rettes and foods and there­fore the mar­ket­ing el­e­ment was ex­ploited to its max­i­mum.

Car­ni­val brings about also sweets as­so­ci­ated with this cel­e­bra­tion such as the Per­lini and the Prin­jo­lata. This is tra­di­tional Mal­tese dessert pre­pared es­pe­cially for Car­ni­val. The name Prin­jo­lata comes from the word ‘prin­jol’ which means pine nuts in Mal­tese. The prin­jo­lata is a de­li­cious car­ni­val cake that is in­stantly rec­og­niz­able from its un­usual shape. The Per­lini are sugar coated al­monds in all vari­a­tions of pas­tel colours. Dur­ing old car­ni­val days, per­lini used to be thrown grace­fully from atop the car­ni­val floats to the plea­sure of all, es­pe­cially kids.

To­day the car­ni­val spirit still reigns supreme with chil­dren be­ing dressed up and taken to all sorts of car­ni­val par­ties don­ning the most colour­ful cos­tumes. Many towns and vil­lages or­gan­ise their own lit­tle car­ni­vals with danc­ing and singing and last but not least Gozo is worl­drenowned for its Nadur car­ni­val that spe­cialises in its own way with the macabre and also hu­moris­tic floats and dresses.

Il-Kukkanja

Grand Mas­ter Pi­etro del Ponte