In North America at least, it seems that one of the stereotypes of Italy as a whole is that they sure do love their holidays. It’s as though every other day here is cause for celebration and loafing about, wearing tight pants, chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes and daintily sipping on a glass of wine to ring in the latest saint’s day, bank holiday, ski week, pagan memory, or republican recess. Some of the holidays even make sense, like Labour Day, Women’s Day, New Year’s Day, and Liberation Day.
Some holidays, however, are simply mystifying.
Have you and your family and your friends and your parish and your village ever built a five metre tall effigy of an old woman, filled it with fireworks, enacted a dramatic reading of her crimes of bad language and otherwise foul mouth (girl needs to brush those teeth!), condemned the poor thing to death, gathered the youngest among you near, and set the whole thing ablaze!? Never have I ever, that is certain.
It’s dark when we enter the scene, as all Italian occasions begin after a healthy dinner, anticipating a late night, sleep schedules be damned! The beginnings of bedlam unfold as we walk onto the field: children running hither and thither; sword-fighting with fallen branches; kicking soccer balls and kicking each other; jumping off of the knee high wall onto the ground, onto each other and onto un-flinching parents’ backs; and generally having a lovely time. The adults in charge frantically run around to set up the sound and lights; sell raffle tickets, drink tickets and food tickets; and say hello and share a story with everyone they meet (it’s like the Minnesota Goodbye but in reverse).
The frenetic buzz underlying the scene is so wonderfully Italian: there’s excitement in the air for the main event of course, but the general excitement of greeting those you love and haven’t seen since Sunday is palpable, and since we’ve done so well with our Lenten fasts thus far, there’s beer and sausage for all!
Suddenly, a proclamation! The trial begins! A group of high school students act as judge, jury and prosecution as they bellow accusations, recriminations and final cross-examinations. I’m left wondering if this is a subconscious projection of the underlying notion of due process in the Italian psyche, as the defendant has no say in the matter, and is quickly sentenced. To the fire!
In the centre of the pitch our fair lady awaits. The crowd gathers, children clamouring on parental shoulders daring to inch ever closer to the loosely wound ribbon stretched a safe distance from the spectacle to come.
There’s some confusion at first. Our straight-laced fire starter seems to have been given bubble mixture instead of lighter fluid. Quickly remedied, torches are lit, and the flames slowly work their way up from below. Engrossed with the difficulty of capturing an image in low light with a terrible cellphone camera, I am literally knocked back when the centre mass of firecrackers goes off. Children scream and begin to laugh, and I may have shed a startled tear. I run back to the safety of my company, and quickly grasp for the comfort of a hug and a beer.
Thus marks the halfway point of Lent in Italy.
After more time for feasting and merriment, the night ends with even more fireworks, a spectacular homemade display which I find to be incredibly ambitious considering the size of the small parochial football field, densely packed post-war apartment buildings on every side, and about a hundred small children running indiscriminately in the pitch darkness below the hail of searing sparks.
Nobody I ask really seems to know how this whole thing came about. Who is this old woman? Was she a poor victim of one of those inquisitions nobody seems to expect? Did she eat too many children in a time of famine and now must pay for all time? Is this even a thing outside of this one city?
After some initial research I found several different variations involving the torture of an old woman in the springtime. For instance, one from the south involves baking a large hag-shaped cookie and mockingly re-enacting a doctor’s appointment asking her, “where it hurts”, then cutting off the offending appendage before tossing it to the hungry crowd, all while the crowd itself is hurling insults at the prone crone, not projecting their own insecurities at all.
The most plausible explanation seems to be that this whole thing is wrapped up in the multifarious end-of-winter celebrations throughout Europe. Indeed it seems that our storied soul is a stand-in for Old Man Winter and all the bad joojoo of the year just passed. By burning La Vecchia we are saying goodbye to the old, welcoming the new (eggs and baby rabbits galore!), and enjoying a welcome reprieve from the cold damp nights.
A Nix in Brixia 