The story goes that as the Magi made their way west following the Star, they stopped one night at the home of a lone woman, living on her own or widowed we do not know, and asked a favor. Depending on the story, they asked to water the camels, or asked to stop for the night on her land, or perhaps asked to buy any fresh food she had to supplant what dried supplies they had brought with them. This elderly woman was famous in the area she lived for her cleanliness, and she indeed was once again cleaning her small cottage when the Magi stopped by. Legend has it that she was quite rude to them, and may have even refused their request, or given to them what they asked with bad grace.
Yet the Magi treated her respectfully and told her the story of the Child they were looking for. She was too busy scrubbing something to even look up at the Star. Some hours after the Magi left and she'd finished scrubbing, she thought about what they had said about the Child and felt ashamed. She dressed in traveling clothes and stout boots and found a big bag into which she put some toys (whether she bought them or they were her grown children's toys no one knows), looked up in the sky, and began following the Star, too.
Alas, she never caught up with the Magi, and felt so badly that now yearly she travels from home to home on the eve of the Epiphany still looking for the Christ Child. She looks carefully into the face of every child she sees, but since he or she is not the Child she is looking for, she leaves them a toy or a book or something else special instead.
In Italy this gift giver is known as "La Befana," "Befana" coming from the word "Epiphania," from the feast of the Epiphany on January 6. She's portrayed as a typical old Italian woman in a long skirt, cloak, and slippers or shoes, and she rides a broom like a stereotypical witch to get around to search all the children of the earth on Twelfth Night, so she is frequently referred to as "the Christmas witch." La Befana used to be the only gift giver in Italy until the advent of "Babbo Natale," Father Christmas or Santa Claus. So now some lucky Italian children get gifts both on Christmas and Epiphany, and should they live in northern Italy, they often get a visit from "Santo Nicolo," St. Nicholas, too!
This custom also exists one other place, in Russia. There our gift-giver is known as Baboushka.
No comments:
Post a Comment