Friday the 13th
Alicia Clark, co-Editor-in-Chief
January 16, 2012
Filed under Editorials
LET ME BEGIN by saying that I am not a religious person. I do not affiliate with any particular faith nor do I worship any particular God. Although I am not religious, I still have respect for both religion and those who practice it. Even though I do not have a set faith, every Friday the 13th I morph into (albeit a secular version of) the mom from the movie Carrie. I get neurotic (more than usual), obsessive (at least more than the day before) and paranoid (wait- I’m always paranoid…). Friday the 13th does not bode well for me, it probably doesn’t for anyone, but especially for the superstitious.
Lots of people make fun of me for being superstitious, saying that it is illogical and stupid do believe in such things. It may seem stupid to the uninformed observer, but to the informed, it makes quite a bit of sense.
Every culture in the world is superstitious to some extent. The idea of bad luck is thousands of years old, and has some root in every modern society. From the Maori peoples of New Zealand, to the Native Americans, superstition is everywhere. In Japan, it is bad luck to write in red ink or to leave chopsticks sticking out of a bowl. The Greeks sport special designs on their jewelry to ward off the ‘evil eye’ that brings bad luck wherever its gaze may fall. In Ireland, farmers will go to great lengths to keep from disturbing centuries old ‘faerie rings.’ The farmers do not do this out of respect for their ancestors, but because tampering with a faerie ring is legitimately thought to bring bad luck.
Perhaps, being superstitious is not a matter of nature, but of nurture. I have a Japanese grandmother, Greek family friends, and I spent my summer living in Ireland. Greece, Japan, and Ireland are some of the most superstitious countries in the world. Anyone that has seen a real faerie ring, or entered a centuries old temple stuffed with fierce demons would find it hard not to notice the eery feeling it gives you.
According to the Wikipedia gods, the fear of Friday the 13th is a relatively new one. There appears to be no mention of the significance of this date before the 19th century. The earliest known documentation of Friday the 13th appeared in 1869.
Friday has always been seen as an unlucky day. In the Christian faith, Jesus was crucified on a Friday. Friday is associated with a number of disasters that seem to stem from the stock market crash on Black Friday. Throughout the world it is believed that it is ill advised to begin a journey or a new project on a Friday, this is due to the Canterbury Tales written in the fourteenth century.
Much like Friday, the number thirteen brings a trail of suspicious occurrences behind it. The number twelve is seen as lucky in many cultures, twelve gods of Olympus, twelve tribes of Israel, the list goes on. Since twelve is seen as pure, thirteen is seen as impure.
If someone asks me why Friday the thirteenth makes me nervous, one only has to look at history to see why. Friday 13 1307, King Phillip IV of France captures a number of the Knights of the Templar. Friday 13 1940, Germany beings bombing London for 76 consecutive nights. Friday 13 1970, an oxygen tank explodes on the Apollo 13 space shuttle.
Maybe I’m crazy, maybe I’m not, but one thing is for sure, no matter what anyone else says, you won’t be seeing me without my lucky charms on Friday the thirteenth any time soon.