The commercialisation and creeping paganisation of Christmas is typical of what has been happening to festas in our towns and villages. The celebration of a patron saint's anniversary in our islands was in its origins a purely religious occasion that gradually became garnished with celebrations of a more spectacular and convivial order.

The birth of band clubs in the 19th century led to band marches vying with religious processions while increasing economic well-being led to more and more public and private eating and drinking.

This country's great dependence on the tourist trade since 1964 has been a crucial contributing factor in the transmogrification of the festa. Spectacular fireworks displays, extravagant illuminations, increasingly elaborate and often tasteless street decorations, noisy band marches often fuelled with wine and beer, have created a superstructure that detracts from and often hides the nature of the religious feast that is meant to be the raison d'être of the celebrations.

The birth of rival band clubs has led to some feasts becoming occasions not of loving unity but of dissension and sometimes of open exhibitions of hatred.

This unhappy state of affairs has, for a few decades, been worrying the Church and all who believe in its teachings. In the past, however, its attempts to control the festa's unwelcome manifestations were half-hearted, for that was a time when the Church was often satisfied by the sheer number even more than by the quality of its adherents.

Today its attitude has changed. Today the Church knows that its future will depend on those who believe in what it basically stands for. Now with its new set of regulations on the celebration of feasts it is telling organising committees all over this country that "enough is enough". Local feasts are not activities principally meant to attract busloads of tourists. The colourful, spectacular and of course non-religious element cannot and need not be ditched, but the feast's core element, a celebration of love and religious devotion, must be given space to breathe and flourish.

The Church's new regulations aim at abolishing activities that have been bringing disrepute on religious feasts and fomenting hatred and virulent rivalry among parishioners. Thus, for instance, they forbid the holding of discos in public places and street parties within the context of the festa. Our young people seem to be partying all year long, so a short pause during the festa should be a salutary break.

A number of regulations take care of band marches which are a source of shameful and occasionally violent incidents. In the first place, they are clearly separated from the religious element of the feast: it is now forbidden to carry during such marches statues of the saint being celebrated. The objectionable songs of the past are now also forbidden and marches now cannot last more than four hours. On other hand, when the local band participates in religious processions, the music played must be suitably religious in nature.

In recent years the Church has dealt sternly with breaches of already existing regulations, and is clearly determined to go on doing so. While it has no intention of stifling spontaneous manifestations of joy, it is clearly telling us all to put back religion at the core of our religious feasts.