Fair of S. Antonio

In Northeast Italy, the celebration Panevin (in English "bread and wine") or Foghera or Pignarul is held in the evening of Epiphany's eve (5 January). A straw witch dressed with old clothes, is placed on a bonfire and burned to ash. The witch symbolizes the past and the direction of the smoke indicates whether the new year is going to be good or bad.

The Northern Italian La vecchia ("the old lady") is a version of the wicker man bonfire effigy, which is burned once a year as part of town festivals. As depicted in the film Amarcord by Federico Fellini, it has a more pagan-Christian connotation when it is burned on Mid-Lent Thursday.

In Abbadia San Salvatore, a village in the south of Tuscany, bonfires called Fiaccole up to seven meters high are burned during Christmas Eve to warm up people around them waiting for the midnight, following a millenary tradition.[6]

In Southern Italy, traditionally bonfires are lit in the night between 16 and 17 January, thought to be the darkest and longest night of the year. The celebration is also linked to the cult of Saint Anthony The Great.



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