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Updated: May 31, 2025
But even there, though the racket gradually becomes less as we leave the piazza behind us, there is in every street the braying of those abominable tin trumpets, and we shall probably turn wearily in our beds at three or four in the morning and thank Heaven that the Befana visits us but once a year. The stage of Paris has long been conceded to be the first in the world.
At the Befana everyone in Firenze goes mad with good intentions. The artistic side of the ancient Lily City did not interest me. I knew it of old. I had strolled on the Lung Arno, I had long ago with my father on a winter tour looked into the little shops of the coral and pearl merchants on the Ponte Vecchio, and I had taken my apératif at Doney's or at Giacosa's. I was no stranger in Florence.
She is quite different from the fat, jolly man who drives his reindeer over the roofs at Christmas time. While Sir Santa is short and rosy, Befana is dark and tall; and while the kind old gentleman leaves something in every stocking, good and bad alike, this rather terrible old lady puts presents only in the good children's stockings, and drops bags of ashes into the others.
"There is the old man-of-war threatening us from the land, and here is one in the bay," exclaimed Edith. "It makes me nervous!" Mrs. Sprague saw that her daughter was tired. "We will go back to Rome to-morrow," she said. "But I want to buy a lottery ticket before we leave Naples," said the girl. "Befana will fill your stockings with ashes if you do," said Rafael.
Noise is the first consideration for a successful befana, noise of any kind, shrill, gruff, high, low any sort of noise; and the first purchase of everyone who comes must be a tin horn, a pipe, or one of those grotesque little figures of painted earthenware, representing some characteristic type of Roman life and having a whistle attached to it, so cleverly modelled in the clay as to produce the most hideous noises without even the addition of a wooden plug.
He looked at her drolly, answering, "Of course I heard her bell. And often I heard the sheep talking to one another on Twelfth-night; or at least I thought I did." "Truly?" asked Edith in great delight. He nodded, smiling mischievously at her unexpected pleasure in hearing of the Italian superstitions. Befana is the Italian Lady Santa Claus.
It is a peculiarity of Roman festivals that all the material for adornment is kept together from year to year, ready for use at a moment's notice, and when one sees the enormous amount of lumber required for the Carnival, for the fireworks on the Pincio, or for the Befana, one cannot help wondering where it is all kept.
Of course the sense and meaning of the original term have been entirely forgotten, and the Befana of the Italian populace is a sort of witch, mainly benevolent indeed, and especially friendly to children, to whom in the course of the night she brings presents, to be found by them in the morning in a stocking or a shoe or any other such fantastic hiding-place.
Peter's to the time when he first sang in public. Christmas passed by, thank heaven the municipality has driven away those most detestable pifferari who played on their discordant bagpipes at every corner for a fortnight, and nearly drove me erazy, and the Befana, as we call the Epiphany in Rome, was gone, with its gay racket, and the night fair in the Piazza Navona, and the days for Nino's first appearance drew near.
The small square of Saint Eustace is not far from Piazza Navona, communicating with it by gloomy little streets, and on the great night of the Befana, the fair spreads through the narrow ways and overflows with more booths, more toys, more screaming whistles, into the space between the University and the church.
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