January 6th, is a national holiday in Italy. As any Christian will know January 6th is Epiphany, the day when the Wise Men arrive from the east to present their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus. The whole event is incomparably summed up in the poem by T. S. Eliot when one of the Magi looks back on the difficult journey they had undertaken. I can do nothing more here than quote in full this sublime poem:
The Journey Of The Magi
‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
It would certainly have been a tough journey for the Wise Men if they had to cross our part of the world. We’ve had the worst (or best some enthusiasts might say) snowfall for over ten years. The Val di Lima and our village have been turned into a veritable winter wonderland.
In Italy it’s also the time of” La Befana” when a very old, ugly white-witch comes on the eve of January 6th to fill up the stockings of good children with sweets and those of bad children with coal (at least that’ll be useful for heating up our houses on these extremely cold evenings.) La Befana is, of course, a corruption of the word “epiphany” but how did this beneficent old crone come onto the scene in Italian households in the first place?
As with the majority of Christian rites, ”la Befana” has a pagan origin. In Roman times the goddess of fertility would sweep the skies at the winter solstice to augur the return of growth in the fields. The broom was a symbol of the cleansing of the earth for the new forthcoming growing season. (Harry Potter eat your heart out…).
The early Christians condemned such practises as heretical and this beautiful goddess was thus turned into a horrible witch. However, the locals would have none of this and, in her uglified version, the Befana returned to reign supreme in children’s minds in this custom.
Indeed, a further story was added to retain la Befana’s credibility. In this version the Three Wise Men meet an aged crone and ask her the way. Only afterwards does la Befana realise the importance of this encounter and tries to find the Magi. She asks everywhere and, where indications are had, gives sweets and presents to the children of the households hoping that one of the houses will, indeed, shelter the baby Jesus. Originally children would place shoes and stockings to help the Befana on her quest. Later, shoes were discarded but the stockings remained, to be filled with goodies.
Epiphany is also the time when, by popular consent, the Christmas season ends. As the couplet says.
L’epifania
Tutte le feste porta via
(“Epiphany takes away all festivities”).
Liturgically, this is quite incorrect, however since it’s the presentation of Christ in the temple that officially ends the Christmas season, on February 2nd, at the festival called the Candelora where candles are presented and blessed to symbolise the advent of Christ’s light upon the world.
Under normal circumstances La Befana is celebrated everywhere in Italy with many local variants. One of the best celebrations in Tuscany is the Florence’s Epiphany parade which I have posted at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/a-cold-coming-we-had-of-it/
In our area the best celebrations are to be found at Barga and last year there were also children-oriented events in Bagni di Lucca including a vivacious pantomime acted by local Red Cross volunteers
Since the winter holidays are so short in Italy it also means that the children would be able to return soon afterwards to school, hopefully in an optimistic mood after their days of being spoilt rotten. Sadly this year for obvious reasons this will not be possible and there is still much debate in Italy, as there is in the UK, whether even nurseries should be opened.
There is a Tuscan variant of the little rhyme about the Befana which goes as follows:
La Befana vien di notte
con le scarpe tutte rotte
attraversa tutti i tetti
porta bambole e confetti .
(The Befana comes by night
With shoes in disrepair
She crosses all the roofs
Bringing dolls and lots of sweets).
How do we adults fit into all this? In 2007 I was a wise man (Melchior, I think) at one of the most beautiful Presepi Viventi (living cribs) in our part of the world: the presepe of Equi Terme just across the “border” in Lunigiana.
Let us sincerely hope that the events characterising the Italian Christmas season will be back in full swing next year. We have missed so many things: the living presepi or cribs when village people dress up and re-enact the events of Bethlehem as shepherds, angels, wise men and the Holy Family itself, the midnight Mass at the convent of the Angel, the ice-skating rink at Lucca and, most of all, the ability of being able to hug and kiss our friends in perfect safety.
In such a relatively homogenous culture as Italy these temporary losses are quite heart-rending. So much enthusiastic community effort is put into their preparation However, it is far better to miss them for one season than to run the risk of losing our own lives and those of our loved ones to the dreaded virus!
In respect of this and the vaccine I recently received the following good news from one of my British cousins:
“I just wanted to advise you that Aunt D (aged 99) has now had her first Covid vaccination of the two recommended. On Friday the 8th January I received a call from her surgery receptionist asking if I would be able to attend at the surgery to provide the first inoculation. We agreed a time and it passed off without incident.
It was a very well organized operation and Aunt D did not suffer any reaction at all on the day. I was allowed to accompany her throughout the procedure which was completed inside 20 minutes.
She seemed quite chirpy after the appointment. Aunt D was given the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine at the surgery.”
So there we are. As the Joni Mitchell song goes “Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
Let’s make sure our traditional festivities and comradeship don’t go away next Christmas!
