I don't remember when it happened that suddenly Santa Claws was bunk.

These past few years I have been totally gyped and have not received even one shiny present from that man. Fair enough. I never sent him any letters pleading for a cabbage patch like all the other kids. Maybe one day he would like to reimburse me for all those carrots I left out for his reindeers though. Reindeers love carrots.

Now I've got another chance! I sware that I have been a very nice girl and maybe sometimes accidentally naughty, but good nonetheless. So I am quite confident that I am going to make bank when the Befana comes creeping up to my stocking this January.

She's like Santa Claws, giving gifts to children based upon some pretend scale of morality, but with a way better story. One day the Magi were lost on their way to Jesus and the bulk of their gold, frankincense, and myrrh was totally weighing them down. So when they spotted this old woman, sweeping her front porch, they were like "Um yeah, do you know where we can find this Jesus?" But someone must have made a complicated spill on her porch because she was too busy sweeping to look up and help the wise men out. They headed off (because nobody likes to be ignored) and soon after she felt pretty beat about being such a grumpy witch. With her broom in her hand, she motored to catch up with them but, as it turns out, Magi walk super quick. She was never able to find them.

Flash forward two thousand years: La Befana is a diligent lady and so naturally kind that she continues to be haunted by her gargantuan mistake. She still searches, particularly on the Epiphany, for those rascally Magi. She brings along loads of gifts to spoil the special baby and since she is really such a sweet old hag, along her path she will drop some into the shoes of young, mortal angels.

Somewhere along her infinite wanderings she had caught on to the western sense of justice and began to leave lumps of coal in the shoes and stockings of the bad kids. Santa Claws would agree that that doesn't rate well in the "make-believe popularity pageant" (especially since the tooth fairy had upped the stakes with her paper money). So these days she gives every kid a lump of black sugar coal candy, in addition to any deserved presents, to remind them that nobody is perfect.

It's touching. And it's my last chance to have someone evaluate a huge chunk of my life for me. So I'm not the baby Jesus, but I need to be reassured too. When I can judge by the little sparkling trinkets or the too-many coal-lumps in my shoe on January 6th, I'll know from now on whether this whole "sweet as pie" act is really going to work out in the long run.