Post 495 - January 7, 2022
The Italians have a Christmas tradition that centers around a character called the Befana. She is a kind of Christmas witch.
Her origins are pre-Christian, but like many other of our holidays, she’s been incorporated into the Christian tradition. On the eve of the Epiphany (January 5), she visits the homes of children and fills their socks with candy and small presents if they’ve been good or lumps of coal if they’ve been bad. She is usually portrayed as a Halloween witch, old and gnarled, with a broomstick. She enters children’s houses by coming down the chimney and will sweep up before she leaves. Like Santa, she doesn’t like to be seen.
The Christianized version of the story is that the Three Wise Men knocked on her door to ask her for directions to where the son of God was going to be born. She didn’t know but invited them to stay the night. The next day, they asked her to come with them to witness the miracle. She refused, saying she had too much housework. Later, after they’d gone, she changed her mind and set out after them, but could never find them. She is still searching for the baby Jesus to this day and leaves presents for all children just in case one of them might be the Christ child. She always sweeps up after herself when she leaves.
There is another version of the story that says that she was a woman who lost her own child. Driven mad with grief, she comes to believe that the newly-born Jesus is her son. She sets out to see him and bring him gifts. When she finds him, the infant is so happy with the gifts that he makes her the mother of all the children in Italy.
Many places in Italy celebrate the Befana on either the 5th or on Epiphany, itself, on the 6th. Michael and I went to the beautiful town of Assisi yesterday to watch the Befana make her grand entrance from the bell tower of the Torre del Popolo in the Piazza del Comune.
The piazza was as packed as Times Square on New Year’s Eve. She was due to appear at 4:30pm, but for some reason, she was delayed until 5:30pm. Given that most of the crowd was kids, the hour drove them crazy. There were periodic bursts of chanting to try and entice her to come out. When she finally did appear, she seemed to get a bit stuck for a minute. As she came down, she made a few attempts at waving her broom to the crowd, but mostly she was fixated on her climbing ropes.
After all the chanting, the crowd was silent as they watched her slowly make her way down. There was a spotlight of sorts that rarely seemed to stay on her. When she finally got to the cobblestones, there was… silence. I’m not sure what happened next. She was led through the crowd to somewhere else and that was it.
The tradition of the Befana is a wonderfully unique aspect of Christmas in Italy. Even though both Michael and I had script and production notes for Assisi’s version of it, we were thrilled to be there and experience it. Her sweeping up is as if she’s sweeping away the old year and preparing a clean space for the arrival of the new one.
It already seems as if we could use a little cleaning up and the year’s only a week old, but never mind. I hope that everyone had a very happy and safe Epiphany.