Italian children get their stockings filled by a witch. She arrives on a broomstick on the night of 5 January, she is called La Befana, and she has been doing the job since long before Father Christmas established his Italian franchise.
The witch who missed Bethlehem
In the folk version, the three Wise Men invited an old woman to join their journey to the newborn Christ. Too busy with housework, she declined — then changed her mind, set out after them, and never found the stable. Ever since, she flies on Epiphany Eve delivering gifts to every child instead: sweets and small toys for the well-behaved, a lump of coal for the rest. She comes down the chimney, fills stockings, and in many tellings sweeps the floor before she leaves — a gift-bringer who cannot stop doing housework even mid-legend.
Epiphany, the proper ending
Her night matters as much as her method: 6 January is a national holiday in Italy, the twelfth day of Christmas, with parades and festivals in her honour — the season closing with an event rather than a shrug. Britain used to end Christmas the same way and gave it up, a loss covered in Twelfth Night: the party we lost. The stocking mechanics, meanwhile, are the same ones behind our own stocking tradition — arrival by chimney included, plumbing implausibility and all.
Source: Italia.it (Italian National Tourist Board)
Knitwear the Befana would approve of
Traditional, practical, and warm enough for a January broomstick:
More classic knits in the Women’s collection.