The other day someone asked me what I thought was the reason behind the increase in pageants, passion plays, exhibitions, and such seasonal dourmaking.
With things like the economy and urbanisation, we expect growth. With processions and statues on the other hand, we expect stasis- Mark Anthony Falzon
Certainly the statistics are impressive. A National Statistics Office survey has it that €113,964 was spent on Good Friday processions in 2011. That works out at €5,427 per procession, an increase of 26 per cent over 2010 figures. As for income from donations and so on, parishes took €96,948 in 2011 – 22 per cent more than they did in 2010. The number of people taking part in processions went up by two per cent.
I’ve no doubt the uphill would be even steeper if statistics were available across a longer period. The point is that there’s much more of it than there was say 20, or 30, years ago. It feels better organised too, and quite bewildering in terms of variety.
The temptation is for one to strike a magnificent intellectual pose, look over one’s spectacles, and come up with a grand sociological explanation about some or other profound transformation of Maltese society. Brows furrowed and lips pursed at all times, of course.
Thing is, I’m not so sure that’s arsenal enough. In fact, the question itself strikes me as rather odd. There are more cars, shops, boats, weekend breaks, restaurants and people generally than there were 20 years ago. Surely it makes sense to expect a corresponding increase in fully-armed centurions hacking their way through the karamelli?
It’s all a bit strange really. Take ‘the economy’, whatever that means. Not only do we not marvel when it grows, we actually expect it to do so, remorselessly and at a suitably-brisk rate. Nor do we light a pipe, put on a pair of slippers, and settle into a snug familiarity when it stays put or slows down. On the contrary we fret no end and predict general doom.
Economists are rarely if ever asked to explain why the economy should grow in the first place. They will, of course, perorate about the ways in which it does or doesn’t do so, and they will also come up with solutions to go back to normal. That being a state of perpetual, unidirectional and unstoppable growth.
So you see, there are two very different models here. With things like the economy and urbanisation and such, we expect growth. With processions and statues on the other hand, we expect stasis. In the latter case, growth is actually seen as a departure from normality. So much so that we begin to ask ‘Why?’ questions when it happens.
There is a good reason for this. Statues and centurions are classified under the category ‘tradition’; the economy and urbanisation aren’t. The logic behind this selective traditionalising is too complicated for an Easter morning read but suffice to say it touches on things like tourism, historical understandings of identity, state patronage, and the like.
Be that as it may, the point is that there are implications to classifying – formally and/or popularly – something as being ‘traditional’. The minute we do that we assume a number of things. The most important of which being that that something is, has been, and will remain unchanged throughout the years. Tradition is properly passed on or ‘handed down’ as we say, ideally in as least an intrusive a way as possible.
What that means is that we tend to think of ‘traditional’ things as somehow being survivals from the past. For better or worse one might add, in the sense that festi and processions and other ‘traditions’ have usually been the prime targets of social reformers. Manwel Dimech, for example, preached that they effectively served to keep Malta backward. (I trust the Dominican Inquisition will spare me for this banality and insolence.)
My Oxford English Dictionary gives ‘tradition’ as “the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation”. I’d reword as follows: Tradition is the locking up of customs or beliefs in the gilded cage of timelessness.
The good (to me at least) news is that, in spite of our best efforts, the cage tends not to do its job terribly well. In keeping with the spirit of the occasion, let’s look at Good Friday and Easter ‘traditions’.
The people who organise and take part in these events – the dilettanti, in other words – are anything but a bunch of pipe-smoking, slipper-clad fogeys who spend their time reciting odes to patina. I’m trying really hard to avoid that quote from Lampedusa’s novel but fact is that they innovate, innovate, and then innovate some more even as they pay lip-service to ‘tradition’.
My local DVD man tells me it’s practically impossible for skirts-and-sandals films to spend more than a few minutes on the shelves this time of year. That’s because the dilettanti are busy watching them in stacks, gleaning ideas for the next crucifixion. I even know people who have been known to go off scouting in Seville or Oberammergau.
The first thing that a dilettant will tell you in any given year is the number and types of new statues and other paraphernalia about to jaw-drop their way through the village streets. As the NSO report puts it, “(the increase was) mainly due to one-off payments made by some parishes to contractors on account of innovations to the events”. And so on. Timelessness? Hardly.
But let’s accept, just for a second, that the economy is innovative and therefore grows, naturally, and that processions are traditional and therefore stay put, naturally. Problem is that the economy is also made up – in a fairly significant way in this case as in others – of income and expenditure related to the practice of tradition. At this stage, one is inclined to change the subject.
There’s another thing. Processions are not the only reluctant occupants of the gilded cage. I’d say the Maltese language is too, in the local context. That explains why so many of us can’t understand why the language absorbs so many English words in their Maltese spelling, for example. I’m not pointing upwards – most linguists I know are with me on this one.
There is, however, one word which is indeed useless – be it in the English, Maltese, or other spelling. ‘Tradition’ should not be allowed to get anywhere near, and certainly not beyond the covers of, a good dictionary.
mafalzon@hotmail.com