While most Americans think of the\u00a0witch\u00a0as\u00a0a possibly evil character associated with Halloween in the U.S., many Italians would see a motherly figure who keeps a clean house (hence the broom) and gives candy or coal to children. \u00a0The character’s name is Befana. \u00a0Thanks to Katrin for drawing my attention to her.<\/p>\n
Italians celebrate the end of the Christmas season today, \u00a0January 5th. \u00a0Tonight is the night before the Feast of the Epiphany (celebrating the understanding that Jesus was God in human form) (source<\/a>). \u00a0According to Italian mythology, Befana will visit children’s homes, filling their shoes with candy (if they’ve been good) or coal (if they’ve been bad) (source<\/a>).\u00a0Epiphany Eve is celebrated throughout Italy.<\/p>\n For more examples of variation in the culture of Christmas, see our posts on Krampus: Santa\u2019s Evil Side Kick<\/a>,\u00a0The ChristKind<\/a>, Snegurochka: Santa\u2019s Granddaughter<\/a>, and\u00a0Black Pete<\/a>\u00a0(trigger warning for blackface).<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While most Americans think of the\u00a0witch\u00a0as\u00a0a possibly evil character associated with Halloween in the U.S., many Italians would see a motherly figure who keeps a clean house (hence the broom) and gives candy or coal to children. \u00a0The character’s name is Befana. \u00a0Thanks to Katrin for drawing my attention to her. Italians celebrate the end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,254,1819,42],"class_list":["post-42983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-holidays","tag-nation-italy","tag-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42983"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67908,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42983\/revisions\/67908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}