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.
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