People all over the world are celebrating Christmas, an event that is continuously occurring in memory of that nativity night when Salvation became present through Christ for one and all.

Valletta, as it awaits to become the European Capital of Culture in 2018 is also celebrating Christmas.  But is this in memory of the birth of Christ? Over the last years  at Christmas the Main Guard in St George’s Square served as venue for the display of a reproduction of the Adoration of the Magi by Stefano Erardi.  A crib depicted the whole nativity scene and the epiphany of Christ.

This year the Main Guard looks different.  Yes, we still have Erardi’s painting, but only a detail from it: the detail reproduced is that of the angels at the top part of the scene, that part which hitherto was always omitted.

This year the emphasis is on Erardi’s cherubs.  It would appear to be a time after Christ but without Christ.

The decision of the Valletta 2018 organisers to replace the Nativity scene with this detail of putti reduces Christmas to a  ‘magical’ scene associated with angels, who point to something that is magical, but not real.  It is a very subtle way of reducing Christmas to  an event in which the presence of Christ is absent or not really relevant.

The scene reproduced this year includes an element that may, but should not, be overlooked:  the star.  Any person who sees this detail  should be curious to discover Erardi’s whole painting.

Similarly, whoever notices the ‘star’ will, like the absent Magi who had noticed it, be curious to enquire about what it is pointing to.  This requires persons who are alert and who long for whom that star refers to; unless they meet  Christ, the protagonist of Erardi’s complete scene of the Adoration of the Magi.