The ancient roots of Italy’s Festa della Befana

In Italy if you are not careful, you are condemned to measure out your life in religious festivals. There are so many of them. Perhaps that’s why I find La Befana a bit of a pain coming as it does so hard on the heels of so many others. Or maybe it’s because it is essentially a pagan festival and our civilisation has lost all contact with that world.

But then again, maybe it’s just that I have become a miserable old git.

The Festa della Befana takes place throughout Italy, but especially in the north, on 5 January, the night before Epiphany. It contains elements that are also found in Halloween, Guy Fawkes Night, Christmas and New Year.

There are various versions but in the most dramatic a giant effigy of the Befana, a gnarled old crone covered in soot, is burned at the stake, though the practice is increasingly under threat from the climate change cult.