LA BEFANA

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On the night of January 5th, as darkness settles over the hills and valleys of Italy, an ancient figure takes flight. Not in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, but astride a humble broomstick, her weathered face set with determination, her tattered shawl flapping in the winter wind. She is La Befana—the Christmas Witch—and for more than a thousand years, she has been making her rounds through Italian homes, sliding down chimneys to fill the stockings of children with gifts and sweets, or with coal and garlic for those who have misbehaved.

Unlike her northern counterpart Santa Claus, La Befana has resisted the homogenizing forces of commercialization and global media. She remains defiantly, authentically Italian—a figure whose roots stretch back through medieval Christianity to the pagan goddesses of ancient Rome, whose story intertwines the eternal search for the divine with the humble magic of a grandmother’s love, and whose yearly journey represents not jollity but longing, not abundance but the bittersweet wisdom of age.

To understand La Befana is to trace a path from the Roman goddess Strenia through the darkness of medieval winter nights, into the folklore of regional Italy, and finally to the national celebration she has become—a figure who embodies the Italian soul itself, with all its complexity, regional diversity, and enduring connection to the ancient past.

This is the true story of La Befana—not the sanitized children’s tale, but the deep history of a tradition that predates Christianity and survives, remarkably unchanged, into the modern world.

Long before La Befana flew through the night on her broomstick, long before Christianity came to the Italian peninsula, the people of Rome honored a goddess whose name has been nearly forgotten but whose traditions survive to this day. Her name was Strenia, or Strenua—the Sabine goddess of the new year, purification, and wellbeing.

The Roman historian Marcus Terentius Varro, writing in the 1st century BCE, identified Strenia as a goddess of the Sabines—the ancient Italic people who inhabited the hills northeast of Rome and who, according to legend, merged with Rome’s earliest inhabitants after the famous “Abduction of the Sabine Women.” Strenia had a shrine (sacellum) and sacred grove (lucus) at the top of the Via Sacra—the main ceremonial road of ancient Rome that led from the Forum to the Capitoline Hill. Her grove contained verbena, bay laurel, and other sacred plants considered harbingers of good fortune.

The geographer Pomponius Mela wrote that “from almost the beginning of Mars’ city the custom of New Year’s gifts (strenae) prevailed on account of the precedent of king Tatius who was the first to reckon the holy branches (verbenae) of a fertile tree (arbor felix) in Strenia’s grove as the auspicious signs of the new year.” King Titus Tatius, the legendary Sabine co-ruler of Rome alongside Romulus, supposedly established the tradition of gathering branches from Strenia’s sacred grove and presenting them as gifts on New Year’s Day.

On January 1st—the day sacred to Janus, the two-faced god of transitions and new beginnings—the Romans carried twigs from Strenia’s grove in procession to the citadel (arx), the highest point on the Capitoline Hill where augurs conducted the rituals to determine whether the gods approved of the coming year. This ceremony was first officially recorded as occurring on New Year’s Day in 153 BCE, the year when Roman consuls first began assuming office at the beginning of the year, though the tradition itself was certainly far older. It remains unclear whether the ceremony had always occurred on January 1st or had been transferred from the original Roman New Year on March 1st.

The gifts themselves—strenae in Latin—were simple but meaningful: branches of bay laurel, palm, and fig leaves, along with figs, dates, and honey. These were tokens of good fortune, symbols of the goddess’s blessings for health, strength, and prosperity in the coming year. The Byzantine scholar Johannes Lydus reported that strenae was a Sabine word meaning wellbeing or welfare (hygieia in Greek, salus in Latin). Saint Augustine, writing centuries later in his City of God, noted that “Strenia was the goddess who made a person strenuus, ‘vigorous, strong.’”

During the Roman Principate and Empire, the tradition of strenae evolved from simple branches to include gifts of money, coins, and valuable objects. The wealthy would exchange elaborate presents, while clients would bring more modest offerings to their patrons. But always, the gifts retained their original meaning—not mere material exchange, but invocations of divine favor, tangible prayers for a prosperous new year.

The early Christian church viewed these pagan practices with deep suspicion. The Reverend John J. Blunt, writing in his 1823 work Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs, Discoverable in Modern Italy and Sicily, observed that Strenia’s “solemnities were vigorously opposed by the early Christians on account of their noisy, riotous, and licentious character.” Yet the traditions proved impossible to suppress. The customs of gift-giving at the new year, the association with old women as vessels of blessing and curse, the specific gifts of figs, dates, and honey—all would survive, transformed and Christianized, in the figure of La Befana.

As Blunt himself concluded: “This Befana appears to be heir at law of a certain heathen goddess called Strenia, who presided over the new-year’s gifts, ‘Strenae,’ from which, indeed, she derived her name. Her presents were of the same description as those of the Befana—figs, dates, and honey.”

But Strenia was not the only ancient layer buried beneath La Befana’s tattered cloak. Italian anthropologists Claudia and Luigi Manciocco, in their book Una casa senza porte (A House without Doors), trace the Befana’s origins back to Neolithic beliefs and practices, arguing that she evolved from a goddess associated with fertility and agriculture.

In the twelve nights following the winter solstice—the darkest, most dangerous time of year when the sun stood still and the boundary between the living and dead grew thin—ancient agricultural peoples believed that mysterious female figures flew over the frozen fields on broomsticks. These were not gentle visitations. The flying women were both fearsome and necessary, supernatural beings who would propitiate future harvests through their nocturnal flights. They represented the death of the old year and the promise of rebirth, the dual nature of winter as both ending and beginning.

Italian folklorist Alfredo Cattabiani reports that La Befana has been interpreted as “an image of Mother Nature” and the old dying year who sows the seeds, even if just symbolically, for her reappearance “in the guise of young Nature.” This reading casts Befana as a goddess with power over plants, animals, abundance, prosperity, life, and death—the eternal cycle of the agricultural year embodied in the form of a single old woman.

Some scholars have even connected the Befana to a prehistoric European bear cult practiced among hunter-gatherers dating as far back as the Upper Paleolithic. While this theory remains speculative, it points to the extraordinary antiquity of the archetype—the old woman who bridges worlds, who brings both blessing and threat, who appears in the darkest season when humans are most vulnerable.

What is certain is that by the time Christianity spread through Italy, a constellation of winter customs had coalesced around female figures associated with the midwinter season: gift-giving, agricultural blessing, flying through the night sky, judgment of human behavior, and the sweeping away of the old year to make way for the new. These elements did not disappear with the arrival of Christianity. They could not be eliminated. Instead, they would be transformed, overlaid with Christian meaning, and preserved in the figure we now know as La Befana.

The name “Befana” itself tells a story of linguistic evolution and cultural transformation. The most widely accepted etymology traces it to the Italian word Epifania—meaning Epiphany, the feast celebrated on January 6th that commemorates the visit of the Three Magi to the infant Jesus.

In spoken Italian, particularly in the dialects and regional variations that dominated Italy before modern standardization, Epifania naturally transformed: Epifania… Pifania… Pefana… Befana. The word appears in dialectal forms as early as the 14th century in the region of ancient Etruria—the territory between Tuscany and Lazio where the Etruscans once ruled. The word was first used in formal Italian literature in 1535 by Francesco Berni, an Italian writer and poet. Various regions still preserve dialectal variants: Pifanie in Lario Orientale, Pefani in some Tuscan villages.

But there is another, older possibility. Some scholars argue that “Befana” derives not from Epifania but from Bastrina—the word used in ancient Rome for the gifts (strenae) offered to the goddess Strenia. Mary E. Rogers, writing in the 19th century in Domestic Life in Palestine, believed that “the act of exchanging gifts during this season stems from being ‘a relic of pagan worship, and that the word Bastrina refers to the offerings which used to be made to the goddess Strenia.’” By this theory, Bastrina evolved into Befana over the centuries, carrying with it the memory of the ancient goddess even as the Christian holiday of Epiphany overlaid new meanings.

Both etymologies may be correct. Languages, like cultures, are layered things. The word Befana may simultaneously preserve the memory of Strenia’s gifts and the Christian feast of Epiphany—a perfect linguistic symbol of the syncretism that characterizes Italian folk tradition.

What the name reveals, regardless of its ultimate origin, is that La Befana emerged from the collision and fusion of pagan and Christian traditions. She is neither purely one nor the other, but something more complex—a figure who exists in the liminal space between the old gods and the new faith.

By the 13th century, La Befana had emerged as a recognizable figure in Italian folklore, particularly in Rome and the surrounding regions of central Italy. The medieval Befana bore the essential characteristics we recognize today: an old woman with a hooked nose, dressed in tattered clothing and a headscarf, carrying a broomstick, bringing gifts to children on the night before Epiphany.

But medieval Italy also gave La Befana something new—a story that transformed her from a simple gift-bringer into a figure of profound pathos and eternal longing. This is the legend that has come down to us in various forms but with a consistent emotional core:

Long ago, on a cold winter night, an old woman—a peasant housewife renowned for her cleanliness and hospitality—was busy sweeping her home. She was devoted to her domestic duties, spending her days cleaning, cooking, and maintaining order in her humble dwelling. Suddenly, she saw through her window a brilliant star in the night sky, brighter than any she had ever seen. She paused to look at it but then returned to her sweeping. She had too much work to do.

Soon after, there came a knocking at her door. Three richly dressed men stood outside—kings or wise men from distant lands. They told her they were following the star, which they believed would lead them to a newborn king, a divine child who would change the world. They had traveled far and were weary. The woman welcomed them, gave them food and shelter, and listened to their extraordinary tale.

When morning came, the Magi invited her to join them on their journey. “Come with us,” they said. “Come and see this miraculous child and bring your own gifts to honor him.” But the woman refused. She was too busy. Her house needed sweeping. She had bread to bake, tasks to finish. She could not simply abandon her duties for such an uncertain quest.

The wise men thanked her for her hospitality and continued on their way, following the star. After they left, the woman continued her cleaning. But as the day wore on, something changed within her. Regret crept into her heart. She thought of the star, of the baby who might be a king, of the chance she had missed. What if it was all true? What if she had refused to witness a miracle?

She could not bear it. Hurriedly, she gathered simple gifts—baked goods from her kitchen, toys and trinkets for a child. She grabbed her broom (for surely the new mother would need help cleaning after the birth). She tried to follow the Magi, but she could not find their path. The star had moved on. The roads were many. She did not know which way to go.

And so she searches still. Every year, on the night of January 5th, La Befana flies through the Italian skies on her broomstick, visiting the homes of children, leaving gifts for the good and coal for the naughty. In every child she visits, she hopes to find the Christ child. Over time, she has come to understand that the divine can be found in all children—that perhaps her search is not in vain after all.

An alternate version of the legend, darker and more tragic, tells that La Befana was an ordinary woman who had a beloved son. When he died, she was consumed by grief so profound that she could not accept his death. She believed instead that he was merely lost. She gathered his clothing and belongings and wandered from house to house throughout her village, searching for him.

One night, she came upon a home where an infant lay sleeping. She believed this child was her lost son. Tenderly, she left his belongings beside the cradle as gifts. The child’s father, seeing this strange old woman, wondered who she was and where she had come from. But moved by her obvious pain, he did not turn her away.

When La Befana learned of the birth of Jesus—a baby who would never die but would live eternally—she was given a divine gift. She would become the mother of all the children of Italy. Every child would be, in a sense, her child. Her loss would be transformed into love for all children. And so each year, she visits Italian homes, leaving gifts, sweeping the floors, caring for children in an endless act of surrogate motherhood.

Both legends—the woman who refused the Magi and the grieving mother—share essential truths about La Befana’s character. She is not a jolly figure. She is defined by absence and longing, by regret and endless searching, by domestic labor and motherly love. She represents something distinctly different from Santa Claus’s cheerful abundance. La Befana embodies the wisdom and sadness of age, the weight of missed opportunities, the transformative power of grief, and the redemption found in service to others.

La Befana’s appearance has remained remarkably consistent across centuries and regions. Unlike Santa Claus, whose image was standardized by commercial artists, La Befana has been preserved through oral tradition and folk custom, maintaining her essential characteristics even as local variations developed.

She is always depicted as an old woman—not merely elderly but ancient, her face deeply lined with age. Her nose is characteristically hooked or aquiline, her chin pointed. In many depictions, her few remaining teeth are crooked or missing entirely. Her face may be dotted with warts or moles. She is not beautiful by any conventional standard. She represents the crone archetype in its fullest expression—the third aspect of the feminine divine, after maiden and mother, embodying wisdom, endings, and transformation.

Her clothing reflects her humble origins. She wears a tattered shawl or ragged cloak, often black or dark brown, pulled over her head. Beneath it, a kerchief or headscarf covers her silver hair. Her dress is patched and worn, the clothing of a peasant woman or rural housewife from centuries past. Her shoes—as the Italian children’s song tells us—are “tutte rotte,” all broken and worn out from her endless travels.

She is typically covered in soot or ash from climbing down chimneys, adding to her witch-like appearance. This detail is not merely practical (though it does explain how she enters homes) but symbolic—she carries the residue of the old year, the ashes that must be swept away to make room for the new.

Most importantly, she carries a broomstick. In modern depictions, she often rides it like a witch from a fairy tale. But the broomstick is more than transportation. It is her primary attribute, the symbol that defines her. The broom represents cleanliness, order, and the sweeping away of the old. Before she leaves each house, La Befana sweeps the floor—a gesture that some interpret as helping the family, others as symbolically sweeping away the problems and troubles of the past year.

She also carries a large sack or woven basket on her back, filled with her gifts: candies, small toys, fruits, and nuts for good children. But also coal, and in some traditions, garlic, onions, or simply sticks for those who have misbehaved. The dual nature of her gifts reflects her role not merely as giver but as judge—she knows who has been good and who has been bad, and she dispenses justice accordingly.

In some regions, especially in parts of rural Italy, La Befana was traditionally depicted as entering homes not through the chimney but through the door, like a human visitor. Families would leave out offerings for her: a glass of wine (not milk), a plate of food, chestnuts, salami, or fruit—sustenance for her long night’s journey. This custom of exchange reflects the ancient practice of offerings to household spirits and to the goddess Strenia herself.

Importantly, La Befana must not be watched. Children are warned to stay in their beds and not attempt to see her. If she catches someone watching, she will strike them with her broomstick—sometimes described as a playful thump, other times as genuine punishment. This taboo serves the practical function of keeping children in bed, but it also reflects her supernatural nature. Like many liminal beings, she must remain partially hidden, working her magic outside human observation.

Italy, for centuries a patchwork of independent kingdoms, duchies, and city-states, developed extraordinarily diverse regional cultures. Each area maintained its own dialect, customs, and folklore. La Befana, while nationally recognized, took on distinctive characteristics and names across the Italian peninsula.

Alfredo Cattabiani, in his comprehensive study of Italian folklore, documented the linguistic and cultural variations of La Befana’s name throughout Italy:

• Pifanie in Lario Orientale (eastern Lake Como region)

• Stria (meaning “witch”) in Mantua, Padua, Treviso, and Verona

• Vecia or Voecia (meaning “old woman”) in Bologna and parts of Veneto

• Pasquetta (meaning “Little Easter”) in Legnago

• Marantega or Redodesa in Venice, with variants Redosega, Redosola, and Redosa in the Belluno Alps

• Sibilia (referring to the Sibyl, a prophetess) in Pirano

• Donnazza in Borca di Cadore

• Anguana (serpent-woman) in Cortina d’Ampezzo

• Berola in the province of Treviso

In Sicily, the celebrated folklorist Giuseppe Pitrè referred to her as “the old woman of Christmas,” the traditional Sicilian term. Interestingly, in 1920, Pitrè noted a custom in some Sicilian areas where people would “carry around the old witch… and we chase her,” suggesting a ritual of expulsion—perhaps a remnant of ancient scapegoat customs where the embodiment of the old year is symbolically driven away.

The customs associated with La Befana also varied by region, though certain elements remained constant.

In Tuscany, the celebration is called the Befanata. Families create dolls or effigies of La Befana, dressing them in rags. On Epiphany, these dolls may be burned in bonfires—a dramatic ritual that symbolizes the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. The burning of the Befana serves the same function as similar fire ceremonies found throughout European folk culture: the destruction of winter, of bad luck, of everything that must be left behind.

In Umbria, Lazio, Marche, Emilia-Romagna, and Abruzzo, the tradition is called the Pasquella or Pasquarella. On Epiphany Eve, groups called I Befanotti (the Befana-boys) would go from house to house in costume, singing songs and performing skits in exchange for food, wine, and small gifts. This mumming tradition parallels similar winter customs throughout Europe—the Lord of Misrule, wassailing, and other forms of ritual begging where social hierarchies are temporarily inverted.

Notably, this begging custom never took hold in Sicily, where wealthy landowners directly distributed food to the poor in a manner that, according to historical accounts, “was humiliating to the recipients,” thus negating the need for the Befanata exchange ritual.

In Venice, the Epiphany is celebrated with the Regata della Befana—a rowing race along the Grand Canal where competitors dress as La Befana, adding Venetian maritime tradition to the festival.

In Verona, there is the Rogo della Vecia (burning of the old woman), where a large puppet representing La Befana is set on fire during a public ceremony.

In Florence, a parade dating to the 15th century called the Cavalcata dei Magi (Ride of the Magi) commemorates the journey of the Three Wise Men. The Company of the Star, a religious confraternity devoted to the Magi, originally organized these processions, which would culminate at churches where the participants would worship the Christ child. The Medici family supported these celebrations until their expulsion from Florence in 1494 led to the tradition’s suppression, though it was later revived.

Throughout central Italy, bonfires are lit on Epiphany, both as celebration and as sympathetic magic to strengthen the returning sun. Dolls and effigies of La Befana are commonly made—black in color and considered lucky, ugly in appearance and “made of rags,” according to historical accounts.

The diversity of names, customs, and interpretations reveals an important truth: La Befana is not a single, monolithic tradition but rather a constellation of related folk customs united by common themes—the old woman, the gifts, the Epiphany timing, the connection to both Christian and pre-Christian beliefs.

The timing of La Befana’s arrival is as significant as her appearance. She comes on the night of January 5th—Epiphany Eve—with January 6th marking the Feast of the Epiphany. This date is not arbitrary but rather the culmination of a sacred period: the Twelve Days of Christmas.

In Christian tradition, the Epiphany (from the Greek epiphaneia, meaning “manifestation” or “appearance”) commemorates the revelation of Jesus Christ as the son of God. In Western Christianity, the focus falls primarily on the visit of the Magi—the Three Wise Men or Three Kings who, according to the Gospel of Matthew, followed a star from the East to worship the infant Jesus and present him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

The story of the Magi appears only in the Gospel of Matthew (2:1-12). The text does not specify how many wise men there were (tradition settled on three based on the number of gifts), nor does it provide their names. The tradition that they were kings emerged in the 2nd century CE, probably because frankincense is associated with royalty in the Psalms. By the 8th century, they had received their canonical names in Western tradition: Melchior, Gaspar (or Caspar), and Balthazar (or Balthasar).

The earliest visual representation of the Three Magi dates to the 6th century, in the magnificent Byzantine mosaic at the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy. This mosaic shows the Magi dressed in Persian clothing—breeches, capes, and Phrygian caps—reflecting the historical understanding that they likely came from Persia, Babylonia, or other eastern lands.

For Italians, the Epiphany marks the official end of the Christmas season. As the saying goes: “L’Epifania tutte le feste porta via”—“The Epiphany takes all the holidays away.” It is a day of both celebration and closure, of gifts and goodbye, perfectly suited to La Befana’s dual nature as both giver and ender.

The connection between La Befana and the Magi is explicit in the most popular version of her legend—she is the woman who refused to join them, who let them pass by, and who now searches eternally to find what she missed. But the connection runs deeper than narrative. Both La Befana and the Magi are gift-bringers. Both make long journeys to reach children. Both are associated with stars and supernatural guidance. Both arrive on Epiphany.

In many Italian families, children receive gifts twice during the Christmas season: once on Christmas Day from Babbo Natale (Father Christmas/Santa Claus), and again on Epiphany from La Befana. Some lucky children in northern Italy receive a third round of gifts on December 13th from Santa Lucia, the blind saint who arrives on a flying donkey with her helper Castaldo, bringing presents and receiving offerings of carrots and wine.

But La Befana remains the most distinctly Italian of these gift-bringers. Unlike Santa Claus, who arrived in Italy as an American import in the 20th century, La Befana has been part of Italian tradition for at least seven hundred years—and likely for far longer if we count her pre-Christian antecedents.

Every mythological figure needs a home, a place where the magic is most concentrated, where the tradition is most purely preserved. For centuries, La Befana was celebrated throughout central Italy without any single location claiming special primacy. But that changed in 1997, when the small town of Urbania in the Marche region became the official home of La Befana through what can only be described as a stroke of marketing genius combined with genuine cultural devotion.

Urbania—originally known as Castel delle Ripe, later as Casteldurante, and renamed Urbania in honor of Pope Urban VIII who elevated it to a city in the 17th century—is a hill town in the province of Pesaro and Urbino, nestled in the valley of the Metauro River. With a population of only about 7,000, it is hardly a metropolis. But every January, it becomes the center of the Italian Epiphany celebration.

The Festa Nazionale della Befana (National Befana Festival) has been celebrated in Urbania since 1997, when local organizers transformed their traditional Epiphany observances into a massive four-day festival that now attracts 30,000 to 50,000 visitors annually. The town is completely transformed: over 4,000 stockings hang throughout the historic center, shop windows are elaborately decorated, and hundreds of people dressed as Befana wander the streets distributing candy and performing for crowds.

In 2016, Urbania took the unprecedented step of giving La Befana a permanent physical home. The Casa della Befana (House of the Befana) was established in a space within the Civic Palazzo, adjacent to the bell tower. Designed by film and television set designer Egidio Spugnini (known professionally as Egidio da Casteldurante, after the town’s ancient name), the house is open year-round.

Inside the Casa della Befana, visitors can see her living quarters: the cauldron where she prepares her sweets and potions, her collection of toys and gifts, the loom where she weaves, her bed, and even the “parking space” for her flying broomstick. La Befana herself—or rather, actresses playing her—welcome children throughout the year, teaching them traditional crafts, telling stories, and explaining how she makes her famous coal candy.

The festival itself is a marvel of organized chaos and genuine communal celebration. The mayor officially hands over the keys to the city to La Befana, making her the first citizen of Urbania for the duration of the festival. Key attractions include:

The Befana Flights: Multiple times each day, an actress dressed as La Befana descends 36 meters from the bell tower on a zip line, flying over the crowds while distributing candy—a spectacular performance of the flying witch made real.

The World’s Longest Stocking: A continuous stocking over 50 meters long, sewn year-round by the women of Urbania in a relay of craftsmanship, displayed during the festival for visitors to touch for good luck.

The Scarf of Love: An ever-growing scarf knitted by volunteers, meant to symbolically embrace all the children of the world.

The Befana Postal Office: Where children can write and mail letters to La Befana, which are read aloud during the festival in touching public ceremonies.

Piazza del Cioccolato (Chocolate Square), Emporio della Befana (Befana’s Emporium), Ristobefana (Befana’s Restaurant), and numerous other themed areas offering food, crafts, games, and entertainment.

On the night of January 5th, La Befana—with help from her volunteer assistants—actually visits homes, hotels, and campers in the area to deliver gifts to children, a service organized by the local Pro Loco association.

Urbania’s claim to be La Befana’s hometown is, of course, a modern invention. But it is an invention that draws on deep wells of authentic tradition. The Marche region has celebrated La Befana for centuries, and Urbania’s elevation to her official residence represents not fabrication but rather crystallization—the transformation of a diffuse tradition into a focused celebration.

The success of Urbania’s festival demonstrates La Befana’s enduring power in Italian culture. Unlike many folk traditions that have faded in the face of modernity, La Befana thrives. She has not been replaced by Babbo Natale but rather coexists with him. She remains distinctly Italian in ways that resist homogenization, a figure of local pride and national identity.

What makes La Befana particularly fascinating from an anthropological and cultural perspective is her embodiment of the crone archetype—the powerful old woman who appears throughout world mythology but who has largely disappeared from modern Western popular culture.

In the threefold goddess concept found in many Indo-European mythologies, the divine feminine manifests in three aspects: the Maiden (youth, potential, new beginnings), the Mother (fertility, nurturing, abundance), and the Crone (wisdom, endings, transformation). Modern Western culture has remained relatively comfortable with the first two aspects—we celebrate young women and mothers—but the crone has been largely suppressed, transformed into the wicked witch, the hag, the figure of fear rather than reverence.

La Befana stands as a striking exception. She is unquestionably a crone—old, ugly by conventional standards, solitary, associated with the dark season and with magic. Yet she is beloved. Italian children eagerly await her arrival. She brings gifts, not curses. She cleans houses rather than befouling them. She cares for children rather than threatening them.

Her ugliness is not incidental but essential. She represents the acceptance of age, the acknowledgment that not all power comes from youth and beauty. Her hooked nose, her few teeth, her warts—these are not failures but marks of her authentic nature. She has lived, suffered, endured. She carries the wisdom of age and the perspective of one who has survived.

Her broomstick—the tool that in other contexts marks a woman as a threatening witch—is for La Befana a symbol of beneficial domestic labor. She sweeps away troubles. She cleans. She orders the household. The broomstick represents not malevolent magic but the magic of care, of attention, of making space for new things by clearing away the old.

Her association with searching, with eternal wandering, with a quest that cannot be completed—these are the themes of age. The young believe they can achieve everything. The old know better. La Befana embodies the bittersweet wisdom that some losses cannot be recovered, some mistakes cannot be undone, and yet life continues, and meaning can be found in serving others even when personal fulfillment remains elusive.

Her dual role as both gift-giver and punisher reflects the crone’s traditional function as judge. She knows. She sees. She cannot be deceived or charmed. Children cannot manipulate her with cuteness or tears. She dispenses justice—rewards for the good, coal for the bad—without sentimentality. This makes her a more complex figure than Santa Claus, whose jolly benevolence sometimes seems undiscerning.

The persistence of La Befana suggests that Italian culture has preserved something that much of the modern West has lost: a space for the powerful old woman, a recognition that feminine divinity does not end with youth and fertility but continues into age, that the crone deserves honor rather than fear, and that wisdom, judgment, and transformative power are the gifts of those who have lived long enough to understand the full cycle of the year, of life, of endings and beginnings.

In the 21st century, La Befana occupies a curious position in Italian culture. She is simultaneously ancient and contemporary, local and national, folkloric and commercial—a figure who has adapted to modernity while retaining her essential character.

Unlike many folk traditions that faded in the 20th century, La Befana has experienced a remarkable resurgence. While she remained primarily a central Italian tradition for centuries, the 20th century saw her spread throughout the entire Italian peninsula. She is now celebrated nationwide, from the Alps to Sicily, though the strongest traditions remain in Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio, Marche, and the other central regions where she has been honored for centuries.

This national spread occurred despite—or perhaps because of—Italy’s unification as a modern nation-state in 1861. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, as Italy struggled to create a unified national identity out of its diverse regional cultures, certain folk traditions were elevated as symbols of Italian-ness. La Befana, with her deep roots in Italian soil and her resistance to foreign influence, became one such symbol.

She coexists with, rather than competing against, Babbo Natale (Santa Claus). Many Italian families celebrate both: Babbo Natale brings gifts on Christmas Day (December 25), while La Befana arrives on Epiphany (January 6). This dual celebration reflects the layered nature of Italian culture itself—willing to adopt foreign traditions but unwilling to abandon authentic local ones.

Commercial interests have, to some degree, embraced La Befana. Dolls, decorations, candies, and other merchandise featuring her image are widely available. Candy coal—black sugar candy shaped like lumps of coal—has become a beloved Epiphany treat that children receive alongside sweets, transforming punishment into pleasure.

Yet La Befana has resisted the kind of complete commercial takeover that transformed Santa Claus. She appears in Italian advertising, certainly, but not as ubiquitously or as universally as Santa does in American and global marketing. She remains fundamentally a figure of folk tradition rather than corporate branding. Her image has not been standardized by a single company or artist. Local variations persist. She belongs to Italian culture rather than to any commercial entity.

Italian popular culture continues to find new ways to celebrate and reimagine her. The children’s book Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola, featuring a kindly grandmother-witch, gained international popularity and sparked a “Strega Nona Fall” trend on social media platforms like TikTok, where users celebrate cozy domestic life, traditional crafts, and intergenerational wisdom. While Strega Nona is not explicitly La Befana, the cultural continuity is obvious—both are grandmother-witches, both represent Italian folk tradition, both embody the crone archetype in its benevolent aspect.

The digital age has created new spaces for La Befana. Social media accounts dedicated to Urbania’s festival reach hundreds of thousands of users. YouTube videos showing La Befana’s dramatic descent from the bell tower have millions of views. Online retailers ship La Befana merchandise worldwide to Italian diaspora communities hungry for connection to their cultural roots.

For Italians living abroad—and there are tens of millions of people of Italian descent scattered across the Americas, Australia, and Europe—La Befana serves as a powerful symbol of cultural identity. She is Italian in a way that Santa Claus can never be. Celebrating La Befana becomes an act of cultural preservation, a way of teaching children about their heritage, a connection to ancestral lands and traditions.

In Italy itself, La Befana remains relevant because she fulfills functions that Santa Claus does not. She marks the end of the holiday season rather than its peak. She represents wisdom and age rather than jolly abundance. She embodies the Italian appreciation for tradition, regionalism, and continuity with the ancient past. She is a reminder that beneath the modern surface of Italy lie layers of history stretching back through medieval Christianity to pagan Rome and beyond.

What, then, does La Befana mean? What does she represent to the Italians who have honored her for more than a millennium, and what does she offer to those outside Italy who encounter her story?

She is continuity. In her, the ancient goddess Strenia survives, Christianized but not destroyed. The Roman customs of New Year gift-giving persist. The agricultural beliefs of Neolithic farmers echo. She demonstrates how cultures preserve their deepest values by transforming rather than abandoning them, by layering new meanings over old truths, by finding ways to keep ancient wisdom alive even as the world changes around it.

She is complexity. Unlike the one-dimensional cheer of Santa Claus, La Befana contains multitudes. She is generous and stern, loving and judgmental, magical and domestic, blessed and cursed. She represents the full human experience rather than a sanitized version of it. Her eternal search speaks to regret, loss, and the chances we miss. Her gift-giving speaks to redemption, service, and love. She is not simple because life is not simple.

She is feminine power. In an era when powerful women—especially older women—are often marginalized or made invisible, La Befana insists on the significance of the crone. She is not beautiful, not young, not fertile. Yet she is powerful, magical, wise. She judges. She dispenses justice. She cares for all children. Her worth is not measured by appearance or sexuality but by wisdom, experience, and action.

She is Italian identity. For Italians, La Befana represents cultural distinctiveness. She has not been homogenized by globalization. She remains authentically local even as she has become nationally celebrated. She connects modern Italians to their regional roots, to their pre-Christian past, to the accumulated traditions of centuries. In a world of increasingly uniform global culture, she stands as a reminder that some things cannot and should not be standardized.

She is the mystery of the sacred in the ordinary. La Befana is not a goddess, not a saint, not explicitly divine. She is an old woman with a broom. Yet through her, the sacred enters ordinary homes. The boundary between the mundane and the magical dissolves. A simple act—leaving gifts in stockings—becomes a ritual connecting families to ancient traditions, to the cycle of the year, to the hope for blessing in the coming year.