I think some of the younger people I know, including my children, are far less superstitious than people in their 50’s and 60’s. Why is that? It’s my opinion that those of us who are a tad older grew up around all these crazy superstitions. Drop a fork and it means company is coming, if you find a penny and it’s face up, you will have good luck the rest of the day. Death and accidents always come in threes. And one of my go to’s, if I say the words never in a sentence, I always knock on wood for luck.
I have done some research on where these superstitions come from, but the answers aren’t very satisfying. Obscure notions that knocking on wood is important because it was thought that good fairies lived in trees.
The one superstition we are addressing today is the notion that Friday the 13th is always a bad luck day! I must confess that I have rarely experienced a bad Friday the 13th. And it’s not because I am not superstitious. It just seems like I have a bit of contrariness in me. I was however, curious as to how the whole Friday the 13th issue came about and I have found it has two parts. First of all, my favorite day of the week, Friday, is itself supposed to be a bad luck day. Then, on top of that we add the issue of 13 being a bad luck number. It’s a double whammy.
I finally found a post on History.com that made some sense, see what you think:
“FRIDAY THE 13TH IN POP CULTURE
An important milestone in the history of the Friday the 13th legend in particular (not just the number 13) occurred in 1907, with the publication of the novel Friday, the Thirteenth written by Thomas William Lawson.
The book told the story of a New York City stockbroker who plays on superstitions about the date to create chaos on Wall Street, and make a killing on the market.
The horror movie Friday the 13th, released in 1980, introduced the world to a hockey mask-wearing killer named Jason, and is perhaps the best-known example of the famous superstition in pop culture history. The movie spawned multiple sequels, as well as comic books, novellas, video games, related merchandise and countless terrifying Halloween costumes.
WHAT BAD THINGS HAPPENED ON FRIDAY 13TH?
On Friday, October 13, 1307, officers of King Philip IV of France arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar, a powerful religious and military order formed in the 12th century for the defense of the Holy Land.
Imprisoned on charges of various illegal behaviors (but really because the king wanted access to their financial resources), many Templars were later executed. Some cite the link with the Templars as the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition, but like many legends involving the Templars and their history, the truth remains murky.
In more recent times, a number of traumatic events have occurred on Friday the 13th, including the German bombing of Buckingham Palace (September 1940); the murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens, New York (March 1964); a cyclone that killed more than 300,000 people in Bangladesh (November 1970); the disappearance of a Chilean Air Force plane in the Andes (October 1972); the death of rapper Tupac Shakur (September 1996) and the crash of the Costa Concordia cruise ship off the coast of Italy, which killed 30 people (January 2012).“
I am certain most people have their own Friday 13th bad luck stories, but I must say, for the most part, I think Friday the 13th gets a bad rap. Enjoy your Friday, and don’t worry too much about bad luck today. At Central Comm we subscribe to the notion that most of the time life is what you make of it. Luck has a small role, but it seems more often than not we make our own luck.
Central Comm
