Photo Gallery Befana Casts a Christmas Spell
La Befana, Italy's scary Christmas witch, flies across the country on the eve of the January 6 Epiphany with a burlap sack full of candy and charcoal. Urbania, a tiny town in the northeastern region of Le Marche, hosts an annual Le Befana Festival. Read the story: "Delivering Presents on a Broomstick: Italy's Christmas Witch ".
Other than stuffing stockings, Befana has little holiday charm. "She's a very ugly old woman with a long nose, dressed in a long skirt with a lot of patches and a scarf around her head. And she flies on a broomstick," says Samuele Sabatini, who organizes the annual festival.
One popular legend holds that the three wise men stopped to ask an old woman for directions to Bethlehem, but she refused to come with them. For that she's been given the punishment of seeking out the Christ child for eternity, and filling up stockings hung by chimneys throughout Italy. Instead of cookies and milk, families leave wine and fruit for La Befana.
Befana used to fill socks with things like onions and fruit. She becomes more commercial every year, and pre-packaged stockings can now be found in toy stores. Some of the Befanas who appear in Urbania each year have even traded in their broomsticks for more modern transportation.
During the festival, the streets of Urbania fill up with ugly old women (or people dressed like them) who do everything from doling out candy to dancing and juggling in the streets. An estimated 30,000 to 50,000 people make their way to the festival each year.
Kids line up to sit on Befana's lap, often begging to be spared the gift of coal, which tends to be met with tears from people of all ages. Befana has traditionally been viewed as a disciplinarian, a task Urbania's leading Befana still takes quite seriously. "They have to understand that they must be obedient," she says.
