Snippets from the Italian Scene
La Befana
1998: I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. Ours was nice, though we had a pipe burst under the kitchen sink at 4 in the afternoon on the 31st. Gallons of water all over the place, and things would have been grim indeed if our 5 year-old son hadn't taken it as a personal insult and berated the pipe soundly. So soundly that all we could do was laugh as we mopped and dried.
He's back in school -- vacation traditionally ends with Epiphany, the day the Magi arrived at the manger. Though most Italians now exchange gifts on Christmas day, in the past the exchange took place on Epiphany, which makes sense if you think about it. However, they weren't brought by the Magi, but rather by the Befana, an old witch who flies through the night on a broom. According to popular tradition she refused the Magi hospitality but then changed her mind and tried to follow them to the Christ Child. But she got lost, and renews her search every year, leaving the children she visits stockings full of candies and carbone dolce, a rock candy that looks remarkably like coal. This year she was busier than usual, distributing gifts to the children in the camps opened in Southern Italy to host refugees from Kossovo and Kurdistan.
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