This post is coming WAY after the fact, but I had a few thoughts to share from Christmastime this year and I'm just going to do it.
My holiday was pretty low-key: I took a short roadtrip with my sister the weekend before Christmas to visit some friends in sunny LA and take the scenic coastal highway home with a stop at Hearst Castle...
Spent a quiet Christmas at home with just my immediate family--got my first diamonds on a necklace from Dad, plus a GPS (very exciting for those of you that remember how directionally challenged I am) and quite a few other nice things from family and friends (thank you!).
As I wasn't traveling this year and have been feeling the need to take a trip lately (esp. jealous of all my friends who went exotic places like India or France!), here's a Christmas memory or spotlight of the past: the Italian tradition of La Befana (the Christmas Witch)
JANUARY 6thLa Befana: Kindly old witch who brings children toys on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6. According to the legend of la Befana, the Three Wise Men stopped at her hut to ask directions on their way to Bethlehem and to invite her to join them. She refused, and later a shepherd asked her to join him in paying respect to the Christ Child. Again she refused, and when night fell she saw a great light in the skies.
La Befana thought perhaps she should have gone with the Three Wise Men, so she gathered some toys that had belonged to her own child, who had died, and ran to find the kings and the shepherd. But la Befana could not find them or the stable. Now, each year she looks for the Christ Child. Since she can not find him, she leaves gifts for the children of Italy and pieces of coal (nowadays carbone dolce, a rock candy that looks remarkably like coal) for the bad ones.
http://italian.about.com/library/weekly/aa120600f.htm
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