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Every January 5th, Italian children leave a stocking by the fireplace, and it is not Santa Claus they are waiting on. It is an old woman on a broomstick, still searching for a stable she missed by one night, more than two thousand years ago.
Who Is La Befana?
La Befana is the witch of the Italian Epiphany, the holiday on January 6th that marks the Three Kings' arrival in Bethlehem. She flies from rooftop to rooftop the night before, slipping down chimneys the way Santa Claus does, except her sack holds candy for children who behaved and something closer to a warning for the ones who did not. She is drawn as elderly and ragged, wrapped in a soot-stained shawl, riding a broom instead of a sleigh. Unlike most witches in folklore, she is not feared so much as pitied. She keeps flying because she never finished the one journey she was asked to take.
According to Eataly's cultural desk and the travel outlet Walks of Italy, La Befana has appeared in Italian tradition since at least the eighth century, and both trace her name to “epifania,” the Italian word for Epiphany. The first written record of “Befana” as a name shows up in a script from 1549, likely a worn-down corruption of that word passed through centuries of dialect.
The Origin Story: A Missed Invitation
The legend explains her endless flight. The Three Wise Men, on their way to find the newborn Jesus, stopped at a small cottage and asked the old woman living there for directions. She had none to give, but she took them in for the night anyway, feeding them and giving them a warm place to sleep. In the morning, the Magi invited her to come along. She said no. She had a house to clean and a floor to sweep, and Bethlehem could wait.
It could not. By the time she changed her mind, filled a basket with gifts for the child she'd never met, and set out after them, the Magi were gone. She followed their star as best she could, going door to door and asking every child she passed if they had seen the baby, leaving a small gift at each house in case that child turned out to be the one. She never found Him. So she keeps searching, leaving gifts every Epiphany Eve, just in case this is the year it works out.
Candy for the Good, Coal for the Rest
The tradition splits children into two piles the same way most Christmas-adjacent folklore does. Well-behaved kids wake up to candy, small toys, or dried fruit tucked into their stockings. Kids who spent the year testing their parents' patience get “coal” instead, though almost nobody in modern Italy burns an actual lump of anthracite in a child's sock. What they get is carbone dolce, a hard black rock candy shaped to look exactly like a chunk of coal, sold in every Italian market from December through early January. It is common for one child to receive both in the same stocking, since La Befana is said to judge by the whole year rather than a single tantrum.
She is also a tidy houseguest. Families in some regions leave a small broom beside her plate of food, believing she will sweep the floor before she goes, quite literally clearing away the bad luck of the year that just ended.
Where the Legend Comes From
Historians generally agree the Christian story is layered on top of something older. Pre-Christian Roman winter solstice rites described female spirits flying over the fields during the twelve nights following the solstice, blessing the coming harvest. One leading theory ties La Befana to a Sabine goddess associated with agricultural renewal, sometimes recorded under the names Strenia or Bastrina. When Christianity absorbed the older midwinter calendar into its own liturgical year, the flying field-spirit appears to have kept her wings and her broom, and picked up the Magi's unfinished errand along the way.
That double origin is part of why La Befana reads differently from most witch figures in European folklore. She was never demonized the way witches were during the continent's witch-hunt centuries. Italians do not fear her arrival; they set out a plate of food for her, the way other cultures leave cookies for Santa. If you want to bring a piece of that tradition into your own home this January, this hand-painted Befana figurine makes a fitting centerpiece for an Epiphany table. Learn More
A Public Holiday Named After a Witch
The Epiphany, and by extension La Befana, is a national public holiday in Italy. Markets set up in piazzas across the country in the days leading up to January 6th, selling carbone dolce and Befana dolls to hang in windows, and in towns across Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany, local festivals stage her arrival with women dressed as the witch descending on ropes from church towers, to the delight of children waiting below.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is La Befana a good witch or a bad witch?
Neither, exactly. Italian tradition treats her as a benevolent, slightly melancholy figure rather than a villain. Even the coal she leaves for badly behaved children is candy shaped to look like coal, not a punishment meant to frighten anyone.
When does La Befana visit, and is it the same day as Santa Claus?
She visits on the night of January 5th, arriving before the morning of January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany. That is nearly two weeks after Santa Claus's December 25th visit, part of a separate, later gift-giving tradition.
Why does La Befana fly on a broom instead of a sleigh?
The broom ties back to her role as a housekeeper in the origin legend, where she was too busy cleaning to leave with the Three Wise Men. Some folklorists also connect it to her pre-Christian roots as a flying field spirit tied to the winter solstice.
Do Italians actually put coal in children's stockings?
Almost never in the literal sense. What they use is carbone dolce, a sugar candy dyed and shaped to resemble coal, sold specifically for the Befana holiday. A child can receive both candy and “coal” in the same stocking without anything having gone wrong.
La Befana belongs to a wider European tradition of winter figures who judge children directly rather than leaving that job to a jolly gift-giver alone. Alpine communities have Krampus for the same purpose, just weeks earlier and considerably more monstrous.
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