Since
today is Friday the 13th, we sent the Perspective Research Department,
and the Naked News Department out to do a bit of snooping!
———————–
Being
wary of Friday the 13th is much more than a quaint superstition
observed by a few uneducated people in distant, unreachable towns and
hamlets. In the United States alone, it is estimated that between 17 and
21 million people dread that date to the extent that it can be
officially classified as a phobia.
The origins
aren’t perfectly clear, but we do know that both Friday and,
separately, the number 13 have long been considered unlucky and it was
around the late 19th century that the first documented instances started
popping up of people putting the two together to form the unluckiest
day of all.
To start
with, the most popular theory as to why Friday is considered unlucky or
an evil day is thought by many to spring from Christianity. By
tradition, Friday is considered the day that Eve gave Adam the “apple”
and they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden- of course, “Friday” wouldn’t have been around yet.
(Note: The notion that it was an apple is a second century invention and contrary to what is stated in Genesis.)
Also by
tradition, Adam and Eve were purported to have died on a the then
nonexistent “Friday”. The Temple of Solomon was said to have been
destroyed on Friday. And Jesus was traditionally considered to have been
crucified on a Friday, the day we refer to now as Good Friday. Though,
interestingly, there are several references in somewhat recent history
of Good Friday being considered the one exception to Fridays being bad
luck. Such as this reference from 1857:
Notwithstanding the prejudice against sailing on a Friday… most of the pleasure-boats… make their first voyage for the season on Good Friday.
Others
theorize that Friday being unlucky predated Christianity. The name
“Friday” was chosen in honor of the Norse goddess Frigg, also known as
Freyja, who was the multitalented goddess of love, beauty, wisdom, war,
death, and magic. Teutonic people are thought to have considered the day
extremely unlucky, especially for weddings, due in part to the lovely
goddess the day was named for. Later, the Christian church attempted to
demonize the goddess, so that may or may not be a contributing factor as
well.
As for the
unluckiness of the number 13, as with Friday, there are numerous
possibilities for the origin, the most popular of which also stems from
Christianity. It is considered incredibly bad luck to have 13 people
sitting at a table for dinner, which supposedly is due to the fact that
Judas Iscariot was by tradition the 13th person to be seated to dine at
the Last Supper.
However, the Hindus also believed that it was bad luck for 13 people to gather together for any purpose at the same time.
Far away in northern Europe, the Vikings
of ancient times told a very similar story. According to the old Norse
myth, 12 gods were feasting at the banquet hall at Valhalla, when Loki,
the god of Mischief, showed up uninvited. This, of course, brought the
count of gods up to the dreaded number of 13. Loki then encouraged Hod,
the blind god of winter and darkness, to murder Balder the Good with a
spear of mistletoe,
throwing all of Valhalla into mourning, and once again providing
another example of a story in history that congregating with 13 for
dinner is a bad idea.
It should
be noted, though, that not all cultures in the ancient world recoiled at
the number 13. The Ancient Egyptians believed life was a spiritual
journey that unfolded in stages. They believed that 12 of those stages
occurred in this life, but last, the 13th, was a joyous transformative
ascension to an eternal afterlife. So the number 13 represented death to
the Egyptians, but not death as in decay and fear, but as
acknowledgement of a glorious eternal life. Of course, it’s always
possible the association with death from Egyptian tradition later
morphed into death in an unlucky sense later by cultures influenced by
Egypt.
As with the
notion of Friday being unlucky, “13″ being popularly considered unlucky
really seemed to gain steam around the 17th-18th centuries, and by the
19th century in the Western world was likewise extremely widespread in
several different cultures.
Others
point to the last day of King Harold II’s reign on Friday, October 13,
1066. William of Normandy gave him the opportunity to relinquish his
crown, which he refused. The next day William took it by force at the
Battle of Hastings, causing Harold’s demise. Again, it is a modern idea
that this is where the first “Friday the 13th is the ultimate unlucky
day” notion came about.
It perhaps
isn’t surprising, given that both Friday and “13″ as unlucky didn’t
reach their zenith in popularity until the 19th century, that it wasn’t
until around the mid to late 19th century that the two were put together
as the ultimate unlucky day.
One of the
earliest references of this comes from a club formed by William Fowler.
Fowler set out to prove that these sorts of superstitions are baseless.
He thus formed a club known as “The Thirteen Club” in which club members
would meet in groups of 13 to dine, with their first ever get together
occurring, of course, on the unluckiest day of the week- Friday the 13th
in January of 1881.
A slightly
earlier documented reference comes from 1869, in the biography of
Gioachino Rossini where the author, Henry Sutherland Edwards notes:
He [Rossini] was surrounded to the last by admiring friends; and if it be true that, like so many Italians, he regarded Fridays as an unlucky day and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that one Friday 13th of November he died.
The notion
of Friday the 13th being the unluckiest of the unlucky picked up steam
from around this point and once we get into the early 20th century,
there are numerous documented instances of people referencing it in this
way, such as the 1907 novel by stockbroker Thomas W. Lawson called Friday the Thirteenth, which told of a stockbroker’s efforts to destroy the market on that ominous date.
If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:
- Why the Seasons are Called Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring
- The Origin of “Say Cheese” and When People Started Smiling in Photographs
- How the “Black Friday” Tradition Got Started
- Why Black Cats are Considered Bad Luck
- The Origin of Wedding Rings and Why They’re Worn on the 4th Finger of the Left Hand
Bonus Facts:
- The Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics in 2008 attempted to prove that Friday the 13th was no different than any other day. They ended up demonstrating the opposite. From their results, they found Friday the 13th is actually a slightly safer day to drive than other days, at least using two years’ worth of data from 2006-2008 in the Netherlands. In that span, there were an average of 7,500 traffic accidents on days that were both Friday and the 13th of the month. On Fridays that didn’t line up with the 13th, there were only an average of 7,500 accidents each day. Their theory is simply that, due to the phobia, less people drive on Friday the 13th and people are more careful when they have to. They also found similar trends with reported fires and crimes, with less happening on Fridays that coincide with the 13th day of the month.
- In many nations where Spanish influence is prevalent, rather than Friday the 13th being unlucky, it is Tuesday the 13th that holds that honor.
http://gizmodo.com/psychologists-point-to-the-fact-that-if-anything-negat-1306779441
Yes, exactly. And I wouldn’t be surprised if hundreds of years from now September 11th would be considered an unlucky day. -Ed.
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