Category Archives: La Befana

Jan 06 2023
7 Comments
Epiphany, La Befana, The Gift Bearers

20 + C + M + B + 23

It is Epiphany today, this Sixth of January, the day the Magi are said to have arrived at the stable in Bethlehem to see the newborn child. We’ve had six days of Christmas in the old year and now, six in the new. With Epiphany, the Twelve Days of Christmas come to a close, and we won’t see them again until next December, when this new year is old. Thus one year connects to the next through the bridge that is Christmas.

Many of you will be taking out the Christmas tree this weekend, and some of you have already packed everything away. As for us in this house, we follow the old tradition of keeping the Yuletide season going through January, to Candlemas Eve. Not “Full Christmas,” mind you –– the Santas and other such decorations will soon wend their ways into the closet ’til next Christmas. But we’ll keep the candles burning and we’ll keep the carols playing and we’ll keep the tree inside and illuminated as long as it stays supple and watered. It is just getting to the point of smelling wonderful and we are too much in love with Christmas to send it on its way just now. Candlemas Eve presents a more logical transition, anyway. At that point, the Wheel of the Year clicks another notch, away from Midwinter and toward the first stirrings of Spring as February brings Candlemas and Groundhog Day and St. Brigid’s Day: Brigid, the Bridge from winter to spring.

This is all to say that we welcome you to join us in keeping Yuletide going in your home, too, if you’ve not yet had enough of it. There is good historical and traditional precedent to doing so. Ah, but here is another thing we’ll be doing this Epiphany: inscribing the lintel above our door, in chalk, with an Epiphany blessing: a combination of the year with the initials of the three Magi (C for Caspar, M for Melchior, B for Balthasar), punctuated by crosses. We’ll do this here at our home, and we’ll do it at the family home, too, when next we are there. All who are gathered will take turns writing the inscription on the lintel above the door. This year’s will read 20+C+M+B+23.

Each year, my silent prayer outside in the cold night air is that no one will be missing when we next gather to do this. There the inscription stays, all the year through if the weather be fine. And though Christmas be gone, still the inscription reminds us of Christmas’s presence as we pass each day through that portal. The inscription is a magic charm of sorts, protecting the house and those who pass through that doorway, harboring the goodwill and spirit of Old Father Christmas. It’s a tradition we’ve seen a great deal of evidence of in our travels through Austria and Germany and Switzerland.

Finally,  I stayed up very late last night working via the Internet with family near and far on recording and editing the newest episode of the Stay Awake Bedtime Stories series that I host for the Jaffe Center for Book Arts. I had told you about this in the previous post to this blog. Well, the video is done. In this newest episode, my cousin Marietta reads The Legend of Old Befana by Tomie de Paola, while her sister Cammie plays la Befana and Seth and my cousins Larry and Al play the Three Kings. I invite you now to Stay Awake with Marietta Falconieri & Family as Marietta tells the tale of Old Befana, who travels throughout Italy on the Eve of the Epiphany, as the Fifth of January becomes the Sixth. In fact, la Befana must be traveling through the sky right now, as I write this! Click here to watch.

And at our online shop, the Twelve Days Sale continues but it is over on Saturday. Find reduced prices on many of our handmade nutcrackers and pyramids and nativities from Germany, and on many of our Mexican nativity sets, too. It’s our first real sale (no discount code, just a proper sale) and once Saturday has passed, it’s back to regular prices, so if you’ve had your eye on something festive, perhaps for next Christmas… take a look: it may very be on sale right now. Click here to shop the sale.

 

 

 

Jan 04 2023
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Book of Days Calendar, Epiphany, La Befana, Midwinter, The Gift Bearers, Twelfth Night

On a Winter’s Night, or Your January Book of Days

A bit belated, here is your printable Convivio Book of Days Calendar for the month of January. Cover star: Winter Night in the Mountains, a 1914 oil painting by artist Harald Sohlberg. He was Norwegian; he knew a thing or two about winter. Me, I’m from Florida and all I know is it looks awfully wintry in his painting. We had a bit of cold weather on Christmas Day and the first few days of Christmas; enough to make the iguanas sleepy but it has warmed up again since then and the iguanas are back to eating all the plants in the garden, save for the weeds, of course. I was hoping, to be honest, that the cold would help thin the herd a bit, but this does not seem to be the case. What I am certain of is folks in Norway do not have this problem.

We are approaching the close of the Yuletide Season. It’s the Tenth Day of Christmas and our focus is on preparations for Twelfth Night and Epiphany. I plan to make our Three Kings Cakes on Friday (you’ll find the recipe here) but later today, my work is cut out for me as I record and edit my cousins performing a story for Epiphany Eve. It’s the story of La Befana, the kindly old witch who searches for the Christ Child each Epiphany and who delivers small presents to the children in Italy. The recording will be part of the Stay Awake Bedtime Stories series that I host and I’ve no idea yet how this will all turn out, but we shall see what we shall see and if you’d like to watch the finished video, please visit the Stay Awake page at the website of the Jaffe Center for Book Arts by Thursday evening and see what you think. My cousin Marietta will be reading, my cousin Cammie will be sweeping, and my cousins Larry and Al (as well as Seth) will be offering their gifts of frankincense, gold, and myrrh as the Three Kings. How bad can it be?

At our online catalog, we are running a sale on select artisan goods for Christmas from Germany and from Mexico. The sale runs through Epiphany on the Sixth Day of January. You’ll find savings on handmade German nutcrackers and pyramids and nativity sets, and handmade nativities from Mexico. Click here to shop (and save: our extra large nutcrackers, for instance, are currently reduced by $295; after Friday, they go back to regular price).

Image: “Winter Night in the Mountains” by Harald Sohlberg. Oil on canvas, 1914 [Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons].

Jan 06 2021
10 Comments
Christmas, Epiphany, La Befana, The Gift Bearers, Yule

20 + C + M + B + 21

TWELFTH DAY of CHRISTMAS
Epiphany

I know, I know: the title of this chapter of the Convivio Book of Days looks more like part of an algebraic equation than the start of a piece about the Twelfth Day of Christmas. It’s actually an inscription, one that we will be writing in chalk on the lintel above our door tonight. It is Epiphany: the day that tradition tells us the Magi arrived at the stable to see the newborn child. It is the part of the Christmas story that expands it to the world beyond Bethlehem, for the Magi came from afar to see this miracle, and brought the news with them back to their lands. Seeing the child was their great epiphany, and in turn, ours.

They are known as Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, those three wise men, and it is their initials, surrounded by the new year, that make the inscription that we will write above our door. It’s a tradition taught to my family by Father Brice, who would bless chalk and give it out to his congregation at St. Paul’s in Lighthouse Point each Epiphany Mass. I’ve never known anyone else to follow this custom but Father Brice and my family, but two summers ago––when Seth and I traveled to the part of Austria where a half hour drive could find you in Switzerland or Germany or Lichtenstein, depending on which direction you were going––we saw so many doorways inscribed, both indoors and out. The doorway in the photo today is the door to the chapel at Schattenburg, the 13th century castle that looks out over the City of Feldkirch in Austria. I photographed an awful lot of doorways that trip. Surrounded by so many lintel inscriptions, I felt like I was amongst people I understood, and who understood me.

The holiday itself is older even than Christmas, as holy days go. It is one of the earliest celebrations of the Church. In some places, Epiphany rivals Christmas––especially in Latin America, where the Three Kings made their rounds last night, delivering presents, just as they did that first Christmas. They stop on their way through Italy, too, to invite la Befana, the kindly old witch, to join them. As usual, she was far too busy with her housework, which, in my experience, is usually the way things go. (My family is full of Befanas, women and men who get so wrapped up in making sure their houses are as clean and tidy as possible, and I’ve no doubt they would have declined the invitation of the Magi, too.) But that first Christmas, when la Befana told the Magi to carry on without her, she eventually grew remorseful for not joining them… and so she set out to find them. Alas, it was too late. She never found the three kings and she never found the child, and so each Twelfth Night, even to this day, she rides out on her broom in search of them all. As she searches, she leaves presents in the shoes of good children. (Not so good children? They get coal, but even that isn’t so bad, because la Befana’s coal is sweet as candy.)

It is la Befana’s job to sweep away Christmas, too, for another year. Before she does, though, you will find us outside on the porch with a stepladder and a piece of chalk (no longer blessed, for Father Brice is long gone). We do this here at our home, and we’ll do it at the family home, too, when next we are there. All who are gathered will take turns writing the inscription on the lintel above the door: it is, as I said, the initials of the wise men, blanketed on each side by the year, punctuated with crosses: 20+C+M+B+21. Each year, my silent prayer outside in the cold night air is that no one will be missing when we next gather to do this. There the inscription stays, all the year through if the weather be fine. And though Christmas be gone, still the inscription reminds us of Christmas’s presence as we pass each day through that portal. The inscription is a magic charm of sorts, protecting the house and those who pass through that doorway, harboring the goodwill and spirit of Old Father Christmas.

And while I promised that you’d be rid of me now, after twelve continuous days of writings, the fact remains that tomorrow brings another Christmas-related holiday: the 7th of January each year brings St. Distaff’s Day, the first of the Back to Work holidays on the heels of the Christmas season. It’s too fascinating to not discuss… so if you have room in your hearts for one more visit from me this week, I will do all I can to be there. And so be it.

I’ll be talking about these things and showing some good books, too, today at 3 PM Eastern on a Jaffe Center for Book Arts webinar called Book Arts 101: Caravan. You have to register to watch the live broadcast on Zoom: click here to register. There will be a simulcast on the Jaffe Center’s Facebook page, too. And on Friday, from 2 to 5 PM Eastern, you’re welcome to join me again as I host the Real Mail Fridays St. Distaff’s Day Social. Come and go as you please; most folks joining in will be writing letters, but sometimes I do other things, like bind books. There is good music and lots of quiet working time in the company of others, and once or twice an hour, we break for a some focused conversation. 

 

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