On the night between 5 and 6 January, across much of Italy, children hang up a stocking and wait for a very particular visitor: a dishevelled old woman riding a broom, who comes down the chimney and leaves sweets for the good and coal for the naughty. The Befana is one of the best-loved figures of Italian folklore and, seen up close, one of the richest in meaning.
A name that comes from the liturgy
The name itself tells the origin. "Befana" is a popular corruption of Epifania, Epiphany, the Christian feast celebrating the manifestation of Christ to the Magi. Through intermediate forms such as "Befania" and "Pifania", the word for the feast became the name of a character. It is a textbook case of how popular culture turns an abstract concept into a concrete figure, with a face and a story.
The legend of the Magi
The most widespread narrative explanation links the old woman to the journey of the Three Kings. It is said that the three wise men, on their way to Bethlehem, asked an elderly woman for directions and invited her to follow them. She refused, busy with her housework. Regretting it, she set out shortly afterwards with a sack of gifts, but could no longer find them. Ever since, she has wandered every year on the night of Epiphany, leaving something in every house where there is a child, in the hope that one of them is the one she was looking for.
The legend has a clear moral structure: the missed opportunity, regret, generosity as amends. But the figure of the Befana is older and more complex than this story.
The old woman who closes the year
Many folklorists have read the Befana as a personification of the old year. The period between Christmas and Epiphany was felt to be a suspended time, a passage from one cycle to the next. The old woman, worn and ugly, represents what has been used up and must be sent away; the gifts she leaves are the sign of a possible renewal.
Some have compared the Befana to female figures of the Alpine and Germanic world who appear on the same winter nights, such as Perchta. These are suggestive comparisons, debated among specialists, which in any case show how densely winter Europe was populated with female presences tied to the turning of the year.
Burning the old woman
This reading is supported by a custom widespread in northern Italy: burning an effigy of the old woman. In various places bonfires are lit on which a figure of an elderly woman burns, sometimes during the Epiphany days themselves, elsewhere on nearby dates. In Piedmont and Lombardy the Giöbia, a female effigy burned on the last Thursday of January, belongs to the same family of rites: winter is burned, the old is burned, room is made for the new.
The Epiphany bonfires
In Friuli and the Veneto, Epiphany Eve is lit up by great bonfires, called by different names depending on the area: panevin, pignarûl, foghera. They are piles of wood, branches and brushwood that communities prepare for days and light at dusk.
The bonfire also had a divinatory function. People watched the direction of the smoke and sparks to draw omens about the harvest of the year just begun. There are many local sayings linking the wind of the bonfire to abundance or scarcity: the fire thus became a kind of communal oracle, read by everyone together.
The stocking, the coal, the broom
Every element of the figure has its own symbolic depth.
- The stocking hung at the fireplace or window is the container of the gift, a humble domestic object that for one night opens up to wonder.
- The coal is the sign of punishment, but also a remnant of fire: what is left when the flame has gone out. Today it is almost always sugar coal, a sweetened penalty.
- The broom is the tool of household cleaning and, at the same time, the vehicle of flight. It is hard not to notice the kinship with the iconography of the witch, even though the Befana is a benevolent figure.
- The chimney is the threshold between the house and the outside, the gateway through which the presences of the night come in.
A feast that endures
The Befana has crossed the centuries by adapting. Many cities hold fairs and markets tied to the feast; in Rome the market in Piazza Navona has long been one of the symbolic places of Epiphany. In many families the stocking remains an indispensable ritual, even where the arrival of Father Christmas has moved the centre of gift-giving to 25 December.
The proverb "l'Epifania tutte le feste porta via", "Epiphany carries all the holidays away", recalls her deepest function: the Befana closes the festive season and hands the community back to ordinary days. She is a boundary figure, and like all boundary figures she brings with her a little unease and a great deal of tenderness.
In short
- The name "Befana" comes from a popular corruption of "Epifania", Epiphany.
- The best-known legend ties her to the journey of the Magi and a missed opportunity.
- Many folklorists read her as a personification of the old year to be sent away.
- The panevin bonfires and the burning of the old woman express the same passage between cycles.
- Stocking, coal, broom and chimney are symbols of threshold and renewal.
