THE FESTAS

This is without mentioning the glorious 'dressing up' of these Churches during their respective FESTA period. Each year, notably between June and September there are religious Feasts in all the parishes, on different weekends, many with outdoor manifestatins from processions to band marches and revelry.  The towns and villages are in turn bedecked with decorations and the many fireworks factories produce their most colourful pyrotechnics in the night sky. The most popular Festas on both Islands are the feast of Santa Maria (15th August) and Our Lady of Victories (8th September) . In Valletta, there are four other great feasts that ttrat thousands: these are St.Paul's Shipwreck (10th February),  Our Lady of Mount Carmel (15th July), St Dominic (4th August) , and Our Lady of Sorrows (the Friday before Good Friday. his last feast sees hundreds of people following the ancient statue of the holy Virgin in their bare feet as a "thank you" for graes received or as a sacrifice  prayer manifestation.   Valletta and a few other of the older towns also celebrate the feast of Christ the Savious (l-irxoxt) on Easter Sunday when dedicated men carry the statu of the risen Christ  in one big run, usually uphill., to the shouts of onlookers.   Other periods of the year also abound with outdoor and church festivities that attract thousands of people, such as Holy Week, culminating in Good Friday processions involving reanactments of the ime of Jesus' passion and death, as well as many persons carrying chains behind their feet, some of them hooded and barefoot. Easter is celebrated within and outside the churches with great pomp, and many exhibitions and pageants are staged in the parishes. Also at Christmastime, church festivities are at their peak, and many places host traditional Cribs some of which are really intricate works of art.