What do donkeys, stone stoves, inns, watermills, llamas, roasted chestnuts, strawberry milk, nurseries, duck ponds, vegetable markets, pottery, carpenters, ostriches, wise kings, cows, plant nurseries, waterfalls, and bored babies have in common?

Not much, except they can all be found – among very many other things – at the young and growing town of Bethlehem close to the village of Għajnsielem. Every year around this time, hundreds of people wrap bits of old curtains around their heads and trot down to this outlandish place to do outlandish things in front of a visiting audience of thousands.

Bethlehem f’Għajnsielem is hard to place. Part of it is Franco Zeffirelli’s untalented brother, on steroids. The idea apparently is to give participants, and visitors, an authentic and realistic idea of what its lesser-known cousin in Palestine might have looked like at the time of Jesus’s birth. Never mind the ostriches and the galletti bil-bigilla, all great artists indulge in a bit of poetic licence.

One might also draw parallels with the Hameau de la Reine, a bizarre collection of cottages and rustic buildings that rubs shoulders with the palace of Versailles. The place was built so that Marie Antoinette and her circle could spend part of their time playing out their fantasies of simple peasant life. Except they milked their animals in buckets made of royal Sèvres porcelain.

The third thing that Bethlehem f’Għajn­sielem reminds me of sits just across the water and comes in at least two avatars. The first is Popeye Village, originally the set of a dismal film that no one seems to have watched. The place has since mushroomed into a theme park of sorts. Why it oozes such charm and attracts so many people is a mystery I will never solve.

The second and more famous one is Montekristo Estate. Hugo Drax was the villain in the Bond film Moonraker. Among his follies was a splendid chateau in the French classical style he had built in the middle of the Californian desert. It was said of Drax that ‘what he doesn’t own, he doesn’t want’. Montekristo is a clone, except Drax limited his mischief to outer space and wasn’t too keen on events hosted by President Coleiro Preca.

Bethlehem f’Għajnsielem is the grandest heap of kitsch, bad taste, and silliness imaginable

I did say that Bethlehem f’Għajnsielem was hard to place. It isn’t much easier to digest either, because it’s the grandest heap of kitsch, bad taste and silliness imaginable. It’s as if once a year all the farmhouses and houses of character of Gozo spew all the cart wheels, ploughs, kenuri and various other clichés that decorate their fuq il-fil walls.

My usual attitude is to say that whatever interests is interesting, and to leave it at that. There are two reasons why I can’t do the same for Bethlehem f’Għajnsielem.

First, because I remember driving up the hill from Mġarr and thinking what a splendid patch of garrigue and agricultural patchwork Ta’ Passi was. The whole place has now been buried under a sea of huts, walkways, water channels and such. Just as Popeye Village did at Anchor Bay, Bethlehem f’Għajn­sielem has turned a lovely place into an eyesore. To popular applause.

I wonder, did the organisers ever bother with mundane things like building and change-of-use permits? Or is it all so authentically ancient that it predates Mepa? I also marvel at how Bethlehem f’Għajn­sielem manages to accommodate the megalithic remains that are known to exist at Ta’ Passi. Still, if it’s a nativity village, it must be good. (There’s an idea, as if he needs one, for the Hugo Drax of Ħal Farruġ.)

The second reason why the place makes me want to be sick has to do with the whole fixation with theme parks and such bundles of contrived fun. What exactly is the matter with having fun (whatever that means) in normal places, on normal days, with normally-dressed people?

I can understand Marie Antoinette’s aristocratic boredom, what with the wigs, bronze-encrusted furniture and too much spare time to kill. But why should commoners like me get so bored of normality to want to seek refuge in a fantasy landscape? Perhaps the answer to that question is also the clue to the devastation of the countryside.

I suppose the people in curtains and their admirers will rush to defend Bethlehem f’Għajn­sielem on three counts. First, the weary ‘it’s all for charity’. To which I’d say that a good cause doesn’t make a stupid something less stupid. In the unlikely event that politicians did silly things on television to raise money for charity, we’d still call them daft.

The second argument is that it’s good because children enjoy it. The truth is that some do and others don’t, as with everything else. One of my most nightmarish memories is that of school nativity plays, in which I took part and had lots of fun. So much fun, in fact, that I hated every second of it. I especially disliked the bit where we had to carry plastic sheep and walk like shepherd boys. The sheer joy of it all, the festive spirit.

The third defence is that it attracts tourists and is good for the economy. Says a lot about tourism that people should want to cross a continent (and a sea channel) to look at a man in a false beard herd llamas across a field in false Palestine. Still, I would concede that Bethlehem is indeed good for the economy, as are Winnie the Pooh merchandise and trainspotting outings.

The Front Favur il-Mina people tell us that Gozo should not be thought of as a crib. I agree, and I think it shouldn’t look like one either. Bethlehem f’Għajnsielem does exactly that in the silliest, ugliest and most pointless way. Whoever came up with the idea deserves a leading part in the nativity scene.

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