As the first post-summer rains hit, get your hands on some “ghazziela” made by the residents of Zebbug in Gozo, and don’t miss the festa of the Madonna of the Ghazziela.
The beautiful hilltop village of Zebbug overlooking Gozo’s northwest coast is famous for the lacework its residents produce, its parish church decorated with locally mined onyx and the 18th century artillery battery. It is also renowned for bearing the brunt of some of winter’s harshest storms. But local residents have a means to protect themselves from the wrath of Mother Nature, and it is steeped in religious tradition.
Zebbug has a unique and highly original tradition dating back centuries, in which the village residents produce small talismans made of unleavened bread dough called ghazziela which are hung by the windows and behind the doors of the houses to protect their properties from lightning and to keep evil spirits at bay.
Every weekend, starting from early July, the villagers roll up their sleeves and get stuck in to producing thousands of these ghazziela. The work begins on Saturday evening with the washing of several giant oven baking trays which are then dried out in the sun. The next morning, after the sunrise Mass, a simple dough is prepared from flour and water. Housewives, young women and children congregate at a vacant property in the village and set to work on forming the talismans.
The ghazziela are cut out in the shape of a spinning wheel, in reference to what is believed to have been Our Lady’s craft, and incorporate the letter M for Mary, given that the village of Zebbug has a strong devotion towards the Virgin Mary. Every year the villagers spend five consecutive Sundays working on a voluntary basis kneading, shaping, cutting and baking ghazziela - last year, they made a whopping 7,000!
"After mass, the ghazziela are blessed and then distributed by altar boys to the villagers."
No one knows exactly how and why this tradition started, but records show that Zebbug’s first parish priest bequeathed in his will back in 1737 a trust fund to permit the residents to buy flour to make ghazziela.
The baked ghazziela are stored in cardboard boxes until the feast of the Madonna of the Ghazziela, which this year will be held on 15th September. On feast day, the prepared ghazziela are taken out of their boxes, the excess flour is dusted off and they are displayed in straw baskets on the church parvis. After mass, the ghazziela are blessed and then distributed by altar boys to the villagers - adults receive two ghazziela and children get one each.
A solemn procession with the statue of the Madonna of the Ghazziela winds itself through the streets of the village. The statue was made in 1910 by Galliard et fils in Marseille and on the occasion of the feast, the rosary beads which normally adorn the hands of Our Lady and a young Jesus are exchanged for a string of ghazziela. And this year, for the first time ever, the Socjeta Filarmonika Santa Marija Zebbug has won funds from the Malta Arts Fund, and as a consequence the ghazziela festa mass will be animated by the society’s youth band, with an audiovisual feature being screened at the end of the festivities to promote this local tradition.