Cribs

MaltaMedia's special Chistmas feature can be accessed here. This is a piece about cribs penned by Gorg Mifsud-Chircop:

According to Guzè Cassar Pullicino and the late John Bezzina in their studies A New Look at Old Customs (1968) and The Origins of the Crib in the Maltese Islands (1997) respectively, a crib features in Rabat Malta in 1617. It was built by the Dominicans of Valletta. This seems to be no isolated case, as the regular Religious Orders, namely the Franciscans, the Augustinians and the Dominicans had already inculcated in the last decades of the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century various religious Christmas festivities. These included the Christmas novena, daily high Mass, Christmas Eve mass, and processions with paper lanterns. In the second half of the eighteenth century a barber, Maestro Saverio Laferla is mentioned and acclaimed for his skill in making cribs and statues of papier maché.

However, reliable sources trace the modern presepju construction ritual way back to the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century in various localities, including Hal Qormi, Tas-Sliema, H’Attard, in-Naxxar, Bormla, il-Furjana, and il-belt Valletta. It was largely due to the great influence and sound religious convictions of the late Dun Gorg Preca, founder of the lay society, the Society of Christian Doctrine, popularly known as “il-Muzew’’, that the grotta and presepju tradition spread like wild fire in Catholic Malta. It was only to his merit that the Christmas procession on Christmas eve was introduced in il-Hamrun Malta in 1921 and in ir-Rabat Ghawdex in 1941, also spreading to other villages in both islands.