One of the greatest mysteries of life is the fuss that surrounds religious feasts in Malta and Gozo. It is something that I have always failed to grasp, and the older I grow the more this lack of understanding grows.

It is not only the lack of religiosity that exists in what should ultimately be the celebration of the patron saint of the town or village in question. Over many years, religion gradually lost importance in the feasts, as consumption, entertainment and business took over.

It is easy to say that the procession with the statue of the saint, generally speaking, is the least important part of the week of events that are held. In the past, it used to be the culmination of activities; today it is just a necessary addendum. Participation in the religious aspects of the feast – those events that are held in the parish church – continues to drop while that of the pagan side flourishes.

While attendances at Sunday Mass have plummeted to new lows – the last surveys show, if I remember correctly, that just over half the population attends regularly, and this must have fallen even below 50 per cent considering that the survey I am referring to was held several years ago – the outdoor celebrations attract more and more thousands.

It would be interesting to know what the Church thinks about this contrast and what it is doing, if anything at all, to reverse the trend. Perhaps it has lost hope, and is thankful that, at least once a year, many parishioners appear to be united in one celebration that is labelled religious, but which has little religiosity in it. Some of them might even enter the church for the first and only time in that calendar year.

What the Church should also look into is the excessive rivalry that exists in some localities, either because they have more than one feast or, perhaps worse, between different groups for the same feast. It is a real pity that this situation has been allowed to worsen so much that there is hostility between the separate factions. There have often been incidents that led to damage and injury. But, even here, the Church seems to have lost hope.

That this paganism is then compounded by people of all walks of life taking advantage of the feast to play the fool after getting drunk is, again, quite incomprehensible to me.

What is more disconcerting is that a good number of these people are otherwise men and women who have the respect of the community at large and the nation in general, some of whom hold positions of authority in our society. And yet, on the day of the feast or on the preceding nights, they lose all their composure, behaving like idiots after having a few pints or shots. It’s as if they think that, in this particular week, they can forget who and what they are.

What’s more, some of them boast about it on Facebook too.

Talking about the social media, I pity those politicians who feel the need to attend all the feasts celebrated in localities within their constituency – and then tell the world that they were there, just in case Peppi tal-Laham and Cetta taz-Zibeg were not around to see them.

In Maltese, we have an expression that describes those people you find everywhere – we say that they are a “mejda tal-qubbajd” (a nougat stall), an idiom generated from the fact that owners of nougat stalls go from village to village throughout the festa season to sell their products. We do not use it only in matters related to feasts; people who push themselves as experts on everything and are omnipresent in the media each time a situation arises are also referred to as a nougat stall. In this case, the turn of phrase is very appropriate for those politicians in search of personal contacts with those who could vote for them.

There are two other issues that make feasts unwelcome for those who do not like them – and these are the fireworks and the closure of roads.

I can appreciate colourful displays of fireworks, but I can never accept the noisy petards that are let off at regular intervals from the early hours of the morning till late in the evening. They are annoying and disrespectful towards many people who work shifts, those who need to catch up on sleep in the morning after a night shift or have a nap in the afternoon to be sprightly for the following night’s duty. Not to mention the sleeping babies, the sick and the elderly.

My view is that these noisy petards should be abolished and made illegal.

With regard to roads, the closure of main arteries causes great disruption to traffic. We cannot afford to have situations in which main roads are blocked because fireworks are to be let off. Neither can we have instances when roads are closed for hours on end, long before and long after band marches and processions are held.

What is also incomprehensible is that a new trend is emerging – that of closing roads to traffic that are nowhere near the hub of activity. I think that the authorities should be more reasonable towards those who have no interest in feasts and have to go about their day-to-day business.