Santa Claus in January

I like seeing Santa Claus in the mall a few weeks before Christmas and I always hope to see him in the wee hours of the twenty-fourth.  But I always thought after his all-nighter on Christmas Eve he headed back to the North Pole.  I assumed he might take a break for a couple of weeks and then get back to his daily job of organizing the elves in the workshop.  But now I've learned that's not the case.  He actually goes to Italy and works until January 6th.

I'm slowly getting used to the holidays in Italy.  Many Italians put up their Christmas trees on December 8 (an official holiday) and leave them up until a bit after the Epiphany on January 6 (another official holiday).  In America I was never one that put the tree up on Thanksgiving Day, but by the beginning of December I was in the mood.  And by New Year's Eve I was more than out of the mood and ready to take it down.  Sometimes the undecorating slipped to the first week of January, but it always made me feel uncomfortable, like there was something on my to-do list that wasn't getting done.  And I can remember having a dream a long time ago that my tree was still up on January 12 and I was in a real panic.

In Italy the first fifteen days in January many of the lights are still twinkling.  I suppose it helps that most trees are fake and they haven't lost all of their needles.  I guess the duration is the same....for me it was the firstish to the firstish and for them it's the eighthish to the eighth-ninth-or-tenthish. But it still seems strange for me to see Christmas trees and think "Christmas" in January.  So seeing Santa Claus on January 6 was a bit of a shock. 

I knew that the Befana came on the 6th.  Depending on where you live in Italy, you might even get to see her.  The tradition is to leave a sock (otherwise known as 'stocking') out the night before and the Befana (nothing but an old lady) flies to all the houses on her broom and when you wake up in the morning the sock is filled with little gifts.  But in my country town in northern Italy the Befana comes on a wagon that's pulled by a tractor.  And another wagon pulled by another tractor is filled with  Christmas carolers.  And I suppose it's worth mentioning the parade of people dressed up like the Three Kings and some other characters I don't know who walk at the pace of donkeys, because that's what leads the procession.

The neighbors take out vin brule (hot wine) and cookies and cakes and the parade stops right out front so the Befana can personally deliver gifts to the neighborhood kids.  The sign on the corner said that she was supposed to arrive at 2:15pm.  I didn't go out until I heard the carolers singing Jingle Bells accompanied by music amplified by a megaphone.  You're right.  It all has a certain dorky charm. Until you get to the Santa Claus part.  There he was on January 6 helping the Befana pass out the gifts.  He seemed about as out of place as George Clooney and John Travolta in Italian TV commercials.