marantega berola | Venice: I am not making this up

The once-terrifying snaggly old crones are becoming cuter by the year. It’s almost like a competition by now, and if it keeps up like this the Befana is going to end up looking like a golden retriever puppy.

January 6 is the Feast of the Epiphany, which puts an end to the Christmas holidays (which seem to have begun in late August) by the sugar-laden nocturnal passage of the Befana. At some point in history, someone — probably two years old — mangled the word “Epiphany” and it became Befana (beh-FAH-nah) and so she has remained.

I entertain myself in two ways during this interlude.

The first is by conducting a completely unofficial census of the Befane that I see in bars, cafe’s, even supermarkets. There are so many of them you’d think that January 7 was officially going to be Take-a-Hag-to-Work day.

Would you accept candy from these women? Of course you would.

This Befana hasn’t fully evolved from her original terrifying stage. But she’s on the right track.

This is what the Ur-Befana is supposed to look like. That’s what makes her generosity with candy so wonderful — she looks like somebody who’d rather leave you some barbed wire. If the Befana is softened to the point of resembling your favorite stuffed toy, the essential frisson is lost.

And speaking of candy, the tradition is that if you’ve been a bad little person, she will leave coal in your stocking. Some blithe spirit, excited by having been able to make candy that looks like coal (carbone) has lost the plot because this year we now also have fake polenta and cheese. What child has ever been threatened with polenta or cheese for having been bad? If you must be creative, at least make the fake candy look like something unnerving — fried fruit bat, maybe, or jellied moose nose.

The second way in which I entertain myself in this period is by admiring the underpinnings of the lagoon, as revealed during the exceptional low tides which always occur about now. This is the completely predictable and normal phenomenon of late December-early January, and the exposed mudbanks are the seche de la marantega berola (the mudbanks of the little old Epiphany hag). The newspaper sometimes runs a big photo with an overwrought caption that leads the uninitiated to think that the world has come to an end. Venice without water in the canals? Man the lifeboats! Oh wait — there isn’t enough water to float them. While it’s easy to imagine the inconvenience caused by acqua alta, not many people (I suppose) pause to imagine the inconvenience inflicted by not enough water.

Or let’s say there’s enough water, technically speaking. But the distance between our moored boat and the edge of the fondamenta is so great that we either have to plan ahead and bring a ladder (made up, I’ve never seen this), or just schedule our activities in a different sequence. There have been plenty of times we’d have gone out rowing, but the prospect of having to disembark when the water is 21 inches below the normal mean level just spoils the whole idea.

As you see. Actually, plenty of people drive a big nail into the wall as a primitive but effective step up. We keep meaning to do it, but so far sloth has overcome good intentions.

But never fear. The tide will return to its normal levels, and the Befana will be back next year. I promise.

The Befana cometh and goeth