Yep, Una... it's Italian. Although there are different variations all through Europe, I understand. Germany has a guy who does it in early December, I think. But La Befana is always late so she never comes until January. The story is that the La Befana gets asked by the Wise Men for directions to where the baby Jesus is, but she doesn't know. She's supposed to be this great housekeeper, a warm hostess bent on a clean home and good housework, etc. So she let's them stay for a night and takes care of them before they go further. They invite her to join them on the journey to find the baby Jesus, but she says she can't because she's always way too busy with her housework. Later, she gets this dawning realization of what really matters, and she has this change of heart -- her Epiphany -- and so she tries to catch up to the Wise Men and to find the baby Jesus. But she's too late. So to this day she just keeps searching for the Christ child, door to door, leaving candy to all the good children just in case

Another part of the legend, at least the one I remember as a child, is that while she's in your house during the night she'll sweep the house for you, ever the good housekeeper. I don't usually keep that part up when I do it for my kids, because I never feel like sweeping in the middle of the night

Also, I guess like Santa, she can leave coal for the bad children. I think they might have it in the States now, but when I was little we could only get it if our uncles sent it from Italy... but there were these candy chunks of coal that were made out of sugar. They tasted like sugar cubes, to be honest, except that they disolved super fast. Like hard-as-a-rock cotton candy, kinda. They would paint your mouth black if you sucked them too much (from all the crazy food coloring they use to make it look like real charcoal!) but we used to love getting that. It was funny.
Wingtear, welcome back! I LOVE the bride and groom on top of your cake, that's hilarious!
