The Anubistic Befana

The Prophet would like a word about the Befana. No, not about certain old hags in Brussels.

by The Prophet — 2026-01-15

On the night of 5 January, twelve days after Christmas, Italian children hang up a stocking for the Befana: an old woman who flies over the rooftops on a broomstick and fills it with sweets, or with coal if they have misbehaved. The word also works as an insult, an ugly old hag, which is where this piece takes its running start.

We have discussed Father Christmas, so it is only right to give the Befana a few lines too. And no, we are not talking about certain “old hags” in Brussels. It genuinely bothers the Prophet to hear people like that called Befana. Let us get one thing straight.

The Befana brings gifts, as the famous rhyme has it: “The Befana comes by night, with her broken shoes on tight, over every roof she'll roam, bringing dolls and sweets from home.”

The Befana gives. She does not take. She enriches, she does not impoverish. At worst, if you have broken the Second Precept by playing the parasite, she leaves you a bit of coal.

But however it goes, she never comes down the chimney to take something away. Which is why the Prophet is left puzzled when he hears the word “Befana” applied to certain figures in power. It is an injustice to the Befana. The Befana hands out. The Parasite takes.

They are two entirely different mythological figures. The European parasite would be better served by a different rhyme: “The Parasite comes in the light, decked in finery so bright, through your bank accounts she'll roam, taking all and leaving none.”

The Befana is another Anubistic hero, one the good Anubist believes in, because she has kept the second precept and never forbade anything to anyone.

She turned up thousands of years ago, from the start a figure moved by good intentions, and she survived even the attacks of the Church, which called her a “pagan belief” and the fruit of “satanic influences”.

(Strange, isn't it, how anyone who steals nothing and forces nothing always ends up on the wrong side of whoever holds power. Odd...)

The Prophet is a doddering old fool by now is no longer a child, but on the evening of 5 January he still hangs up his stocking for the Befana.

Typically, in the morning, he finds his sweet in the shape of a bottle of rum.

One curiosity, told to him by an ancestor of his: the traffic policeman's Befana.

Just after the war there began to be a certain amount of traffic in Italian towns and there were no traffic lights, so mayors hired people, badly paid, to keep the vehicles moving.

It was brutally hard work and enormously useful, so the citizens were fond of these people and, come the Befana, they brought them gifts.

No.

The Prophet is still sober.

He assures you it is true.

The presents were carried to the junctions, where the policeman's podium stood, and left there.

There were so many of them that in some cases they blocked the junction.

But what in Anubis' name has happened in these few decades? There was a time when the traffic policeman produced a benefit the citizens could feel, enough that they brought him presents unprompted. Today most citizens see him mainly as the man who writes the fines.