Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is the threshold on which Ciccolina finally passes her knowledge of the evil eye to Prosperine. At midnight, amid the village bells celebrating Christ’s birth, instruction becomes inheritance: the girl learns practices for countering harm, while Ciccolina refuses to make her knowledge a weapon of revenge. It is also their last Christmas Eve together; Ciccolina dies the following month.

A Lesson Delayed Until the Right Night

After witnessing the witch’s magical twinning of rabbits, Prosperine devoted herself to Ciccolina, both loving and fearing the old woman. She repeatedly asked to learn her powers, but for weeks Ciccolina answered with nods and smiles, pretending not to hear. As Epiphany approached, she began to suggest that the time was near: Christmas Eve at midnight, she said, was when mothers gave their daughters the gift of secrets.

Ciccolina kept that promise on the last Christmas Eve of her life, teaching Prosperine how to diagnose and cure il mal occhio. The timing gives the lesson a ceremonial character: the village bells mark Christ’s birth as the old woman begins transferring knowledge that she will not have another season to pass on.

Protection, Not Revenge

Prosperine wanted more than a remedy. She asked Ciccolina to teach her how to inflict the evil eye and bring suffering to those who had wronged her: the villagers who had spat on her and called her a little witch, the father who had betrayed her for Gallante Selvi’s money, and Gallante Selvi himself, who had turned Violetta against her and kidnapped her from the village. Ciccolina refused to teach her revenge. She warned that the world already held too much bad intent and too many people seeking to take over God’s work.

Instead, Ciccolina gave Prosperine a necklace made of red chilis, dried and strung the previous summer. Its corno point was meant to break the evil eye and protect its wearer. The gift makes the distinction in Ciccolina’s teaching concrete: Prosperine is equipped to resist harm, but not encouraged to reproduce it.

The Transfer of Knowledge

The lesson joined spoken instruction to repeated actions. Ciccolina had Prosperine fetch olive oil and draw three bowls of Holy Water from the cistern blessed by Padre Pomposo the previous summer. Through the night, Prosperine repeated the incantations and practiced reading the oil on the water until Ciccolina judged that the gift had been transferred.

Ciccolina then spat into her hand and rubbed the wet onto Prosperine’s closed eyelids, repeating an incantation toward the darkness rather than directing it at the girl. She had Prosperine rub the hump on her back for good luck and urged her to use her knowledge against evil. The physical gestures, protective necklace, blessed water, and practiced reading make the inheritance more than an explanation of a belief: it is knowledge taught through the body and entrusted to a particular person.

The Last Christmas Eve

Ciccolina died the next month beside Prosperine, in the bed they shared. On waking, Prosperine tried to call and shake her back to life; once she understood that Ciccolina was gone, she poured Holy Water into a bowl and sprinkled oil on its surface. The beads held firm rather than spreading, which Prosperine understood as a sign that Ciccolina’s soul rested peacefully.

She closed the old woman’s eyes and kissed her hands, face, and forehead, remembering the woman who had been kind to her like a mother. Christmas Eve therefore marks both a beginning and a farewell: Ciccolina’s protective knowledge passes to Prosperine at midnight, and the closeness behind that inheritance becomes unmistakable when Prosperine must use its ritual practices at her teacher’s death.