Witch on a Vacuum Cleaner

By JENNY NICHOLSON ONE thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine years ago, as every Italian child should know, the Epiphany Witch happened to be out sweeping her doorstep when Three Kings came cantering through Italy on their way to the Holy Land. They reined in their horses and called to her kindly : 'Signora witch, would you like to ride with us to a place called Bethlehem where a wonderful child has been born?'

`I would not,' replied the Epiphany Witch, rudely slamming her door in their faces.

Twelve days later, the Kings came riding by again in high spirits, and they called to the Witch (who was crouched on her doorstep mending her broom), 'Oh, Signora Witch, what a pity you didn't come with us; we have given presents to the Son of God!'

The Witch burst into tears. And, ever since, on that night of the year, she has been giving Presents to all the children she can find—just in case one of them may turn out to be another Child of God.

The children call her Befana because it's the easiest way of pronouncing her real name—La Strega della Epilania—the Epiphany Witch, and, except in some parts of Northern Italy where the Christ child himself is the donor, the Befana has always been the one most keenly anticipated at this time of year.

But every Christmas she is being ruth- lessly rivalled—especially in the big cities of Italy—by a jovial Northerner with a long white beard, most unsuitably dressed, for a sunny Roman winter, in a red flannel suit with white fur trimmings.

Santa Klaus got his fur-lined jackboot in the Italian door at the time of the Axis pact.

Since then, cheered by greedy store-keepers, this bucolic old pagan (for who can recognise him as Saint Nicholas since he dropped his bishop's mitre?) has been dispensing an unwholesome delight in material gain, giving presents twelve days too early, laughing and joking disrespect- fully through the days of solemn rejoicing.

Before he came, the time for fun—the time to follow the noble example of the Three Kings by giving presents—the time for blowing whistles, wearing funny hats and letting off fireworks from the roofs of churches, was Epiphany—January 6—Twelfth Night.

The Nativity—the days of Christmas—were always celebrated in- Italy with prayer and mar Yelling reverence; until Father Christmas, that is Although mince pies, turkey and plum pud- dings (which you can still buy only at Babbing- ton's English Tea Rooms and without thimble, threepenny-bit or bachelor's button) have yet not eclipsed the Roman traditional Christmas fare of lentils, pig's trotters and panettone (a bread-cake as light as a handful of turkey feathers), the Christmas tree, once only seen in the homes of resident northerners nostalgic for their snowy forests, has become a rival to the traditional crib.

Each year, more winter windows frame the sloping outline of the gift-bearing fir, although agriculturists disapprove; for Italy suffers so from soil erosion that there is a special police corps to guard the trees.

It was not so many Christmases ago that every Italian child had a crib modelled on the original one designed in Assisi by Saint Francis, with a paper backdrop of an Eastern sky, a floor of tree bark and sand and all the coloured terra-cotta characters (chipped, broken and replaced every year) traditionally present at the birth of Christ . . . the shepherd girl on her way home carrying a new-born lamb round her neck who has paused to stare at the strange scene in the stable, a butcher too busy hacking up a dead goat to notice what is going on, a boy having trouble behind the stable with his stubborn donkey, a child, frightened by the commotion, with its head buried in its mother's skirts, and the Holy Family, gentle, bewildered, surveying the swaddled child by the light of a shepherd's lamp as if he didn't quite belong to them.

For the past few Christmases, artisan crib- makers, despairing of their livelihood, have come to blows with the fir-tree vendors in the streets of Naples, and to try to save the tradition they have been making tactical modern improvements to the classic scene.

This year, as every year, like a dazzling stage set for Petrouchka, the toy and crib stalls have been set up in the golden, egg-shaped Piazza Navona. But within the stalls the scene is changing. This year you can buy a crib set in a Greek temple, or in a mosque, or on the terrace of a modern villa, or even in the lobby of a Grand Hotel.

The crib-makers' battle is a desperate one, for the rival Christmas-tree decorators have pro- duced neon Stars of Bethlehem, spangled Mar- tians, tinselled flying saucers, glittering sputniks and fairies in moon-rocket suits. And the Befana, made to hang in effigy on the foreign tree, looks pathetically old-fashioned riding nothing more high-powered than an aerodynamic vacuum cleaner.

Materialists, aiming at soft pockets of formal atheists (such as intellectual Communists), and parents who are having difficulty in explaining the facts of birth (particularly the Virgin birth) are attacking with lustre storks bringing the Christ Child in a pale blue sash.

The crib defenders are consolidating their ancient alliance with the ideologically confused, by selling coloured fish, scarlet satin bows and indecent red horns to be hung over the Holy Family against the Evil Eye.

But just as it seems that materialism is bound to vanquish the religious aspect of the Nativity, one hears far off and coming sturdily nearer, the music of the Abruzzi pipers. Every Christmas, they trudge down from their stark mountains wearing sheepskin jerkins, laced goatskin-and-rag leggings, coloured ribbons fluttering from bat- tered felt hats, to play in the streets of Rome.

Their melancholic melodies evoke Faith and devotion to the spiritual tradition more pro- foundly than a hundred Roman churches magic- ally lighted with dancing flares; more than the scarlet-robed Cardinal flanked by two acolytes with flickering tallows, climbing the steps of his titular church to give Benediction; more than the children who, every afternoon till Epiphany, scamper up the Capitol hill to the Altar of Heaven church to take turns in preaching (with stylised gestures) to the miraculous image of the Holy Child; more than the bells and the organ music; more, even, than the Gregorian chant undulating from the cloisters of San Anselmo over the quiet Aventine hill.

The shy shepherd boy, uncomfortable at seeing so many tall houses, so many sombre places, so many bright shops, so many faces, moves his clumsy red fingers over the notches of his pasture-whittled flute with touching accuracy. The older shepherd, blowing his primitive sheep'a bladder, frowns in concentration. Their music is for the Nativity, for the arrival of the Three Kings, for the tears of the Befana.

The eerie tunes, which. shepherds were playing before Christ was born, are intrinsic with the splashing of fountains, the ghostly winter sun setting behind the dome of the Gesu, and the com- forting smell of roasting chestnuts; and suddenly we realise with wonder and humility that we haven't missed the great event after all!