Feasts and firework in Malta : a sensory cascade

Abstract

Each year every Maltese parish celebrates one or more religious feasts honouring parish patron saints. Most are accompanied by religious services, processions, parading brass bands, demonstrating partisans and, especially, quantities of fireworks. Fireworks are central to a feast. They frame the celebration and signal its ritual stages to participants and neighbouring (rival) clubs and parishes. They are markers of personal, community and class status. The fireworks are made locally in small village factories. The manufacturing process is labour intensive, dangerous and dirty. Club members, all volunteers, work mostly at weekends to make them. The fire workers are admired for their dedication, courage and technical expertise. The success of the feast is in their hands. Parochial rivalry is intense and the quality and quantity of the fireworks is a key element affecting the social standing of a community. Most fireworks are made in villages in the south of Malta. While villagers are proud of their fireworks they off end the senses of many middle-class Anglophone Maltese suburbanites who look down on the noisy feasts. They particularly detest the loud petard salutes that, to the delight of the fire workers, occasionally shatter windows. [Excerpt]