By the autumnal equinox Sunday, Danni Capalbo had already had her fall game plan in place for weeks. She would spend the coming months wrapped in cozy layers in her apartment in Boston, stirring up steaming vats of carbohydrates. Her inspiration for the season is a benevolent witch she met in the hills of Calabria, Italy, many years ago: Strega Nona, the title character of a 1975 children’s book of the same name by Tomie dePaola.
“She’s so relatable,” Capalbo, 28, said. “She’s a little Italian witch who makes pasta all the time.” She first encountered the character in her childhood library. But lately she has been seeing Strega Nona pop up on social media, recast by adults as a patron saint of autumnal nostalgia. She joined in by posting a tribute to the character that has been viewed over 300,000 times on TikTok. Other fans have enumerated the signs of a “Strega Nona September,” or joked that they were trading the chaos of “brat summer” for a more wholesome “Strega Nona fall.”
If these posts are an outgrowth of the online habit of branding every season, they also represent an enduring fascination with a character known for her quiet way of life and gently administered lessons – not exactly the typical recipe for internet fame. Strega Nona, whose name means “Grandmother Witch”, is a healer who enchants townspeople with her magically refilling pasta pot. When she recruits the help of a young man named Big Anthony, he bungles the spell that is supposed to halt pasta-making. The town overflows with noodles. Margaret Duncan, 29, a healthcare worker in Boston, finds herself reaching for characters like Strega Nona every autumn, when her nostalgia swells with the back-to-school season. “I think that there’s a longing for simplicity,” she said. “Her biggest problem is that this young man who helps her made too much pasta.” Even that problem Strega Nona is able to solve: She hands Big Anthony a fork and tells him to start eating.
The illustrations in the book, also by dePaola, feature the rich colours of the Italian countryside. Capalbo said the book conjured a certain snug atmosphere that was welcome as she hunkers down for colder weather. The character’s witchiness, she added, is also a nice prelude to Halloween. “Everyone has their big fun summer,” she said. “Now you just want to be cozy and make pasta from your magic pasta pot”.