EPIFANIA

Ephifany sweeping holidays all away in its wake, just as the expression promises. It started with the three Magi traveling to Egypt, following the star. Which is why the Italians traditionally don't get presents on Christmas but on January 6 at the Feast of Epiphany, when they are brought by a toothless old woman named La Befana. She is the Italian equivalent of Santa Claus, a kind of good wich who is said to live in the interios of chimneys and to fly around on her broom on Epiphany Eve, leaving presents. If children are bad, they get garlic and lumps of carbone, but the charcoal, miraculously, is made of sugar. The name Befana comes from befania, a corruption of the Greek word epifania, which means apparition or manifestation, since this was the day on which Jesus appeared to the Magi, giving the first evidence of his divine birth. The Befana may bring wonderful presents, but she can also be a grotesque woman with a sinister black face, associated in some accounts with Hecate, Queen of the Night.

In times past in Tuscany a man used to dress up like a witch and surround himself with befanotti, shrewd and desperate low-life characters wearing false beards, and inside-out jackets, with faces smeared with grease. In Rome, the streets were illuminated with torchlights set on red and yellow poles, and amid a great uproar people explored out of the Piazza Navona, down the narrow streets, which were made even more crowded with stands selling toys and games, and into the center of the Piazza dei Caprettari and Piazza Sant'Eustachio, wich were full of enormous booths.

Even now, a procession including three children, dressed like the Magiand carrying a pole with a golden star on top, goes through the little towns at night during the week before Epiphany, stopping at houses and singing pasquelle, little towns at night during the week before Epiphany,stopping at houses and singing pasquelle,little songs about the coming of the Magi. Where the flame burns freely under an onion-shaped hood that carries the smoke up into achimney.Fires have burned on the eve and night of Epiphany for centuries,even when Friuli was menaced by barbarians and armies from other religions,for they are magical flames to light the way for the three wise men going to see the baby Jesus.In some places the fires are called pan e vin,bread and wine,and in others they are called vecja,old one.While the fires burn,boys rund through fields with burning brands and jump across the fires using long poles.

Barbara Ferriani and Sara Flandi