Friday the 13th Falls on a Friday This Month
Today is Friday the 13th. It puts me in mind of Pogo and Walt Kelly. I don't know if it's any worse when Friday the 13th falls on a Friday (rather than say, a Tuesday), but it seems worth investigating.
Friday the 13th is probably the best known superstition in the US. Those who will gleefully spill salt or step on cracks are still taken aback when that date turns up on the calendar. There was a Friday the 13th last February, but there won't be another until next May, the only one in 2005. (There was only one in 2003 as well, in June.) The fear of Friday the 13th is common enough to have its own term: paraskevidekatriaphobia. (Unlike triskaidekaphobia, which is simply fear of the number 13.) There is reason enough to fear: the US loses $800 to $900 million in business each Friday the 13th because people don't travel or go to work.
So how did all this nonsense get started?
It's hard to say. Both Friday and the number 13 have bad reputations, difficult as it is to imagine anyone having a bad thing to say about Friday. Chaucer may have been the first to write of it in English, in the Canterbury Tales. That he considers Friday a cursed day in the 14th century presumes the belief is already common. By the 19th century, superstitions regarding the day abound: it is a bad day to harvest, start a journey, get married or give birth, or begin or end needlework. (It's also a bad day to start a new job - "Servants who go into their situations on Friday, never go to stay" - though anyone who would start a job on a Friday is a fool, I tells ya.) One reason for this Friday phobia is religious: not only did the crucifixion happen on a Friday, but so (according to some sources) did Eve's sharing of the apple, the Great Flood and the babble at the Tower of Babel. Apparently Friday was Execution Day in Rome (following Prince spaghetti day on Wednesday), while in other pagan cultures it was a day of worship. No surprise, then, that it was demonized by the early Christian Church. "Friday" is, of course, named for the Norse goddess Freya (or Frigg), patron of marriage (or at least sex) and fertility. Once the Christians came along, Freya (with her sacred cat) was cast as a witch, and Friday became the Witches' Sabbath. In one story, Freya appeared to a group of a dozen witches meeting on a Friday night and gave them one of her cats, making 13 the traditional number for a coven.
13 is also the number of guests at the Last Supper, with Judas the last to arrive and the first to leave, giving rise to the belief that 1) it's unlucky to have 13 at a dinner party (and by extension, any gathering), and 2) that the first to leave such a gathering will die within the year. Here's another point where Christian and pagan tradition overlap. Norse mythology includes a tale of a dinner for 12 at Valhalla. Loki, the trickster god, crashed the party, bringing the number to 13. He subsequently convinced Hod, the blind god of winter (and darkness, and what have you) to hurl a spear of mistletoe (Merry Christmas!) at Baldur, the god of joy and goodness (and what have you). Baldur was invulnerable to everything BUT mistletoe (always a loophole, eh Achilles?), and so he was slain, plunging the earth into mourning and darkness. The Norse saw this as a reason why you shouldn't have 13 at a party, rather than, say, why you shouldn't throw things at people if you're blind. (The Hindus also believed that it is unlucky for 13 people to gather in one place, such as dinner, so there may be something to this.)
For the feminists out there, there's another reason why 13 is said to be unlucky. The number was revered by goddess-worshipping cultures because it corresponded to the number of lunar, and menstrual, cycles in a year. The "Earth Mother of Laussel," a 27,000 year old carving found near the Lascaux caves in France (where the paintings come from), depicts a female figure holding a crescent-shaped horn bearing 13 notches. According to this view, as the patriarchy replaced the matriarchy and the solar calendar triumphed over the lunar, the number 13 became considered evil.
So you've got your Friday, you've got your 13; how did these two great tastes start tasting great together? One theory links it to the destruction of the Knights Templar in 1307. The Knights were an order of religious warriors sent to guard Jerusalem following the Crusades, early in the 12th century. Remember the old guy at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? He's one. After a couple of centuries, the Knights had amassed enough power to make kings and popes pause. So on Friday, the 13th of October, 1307, Philip the Fair (Philip IV) of France rounded up their Grand Master and thousands of his followers, charging them with heresy, blasphemy, and yes, what have you. They were "questioned" by the Inquisition (everyone had an Inquisition in the Middle Ages), which is to say tortured. In the grand tradition of Christian justice, those who didn't die during questioning were executed once they confessed.
This is a fine explanation, and would be more convincing were knowledge of the history of the Knights Templar more widespread. In truth, references pairing Friday and 13 don't appear until the 20th century. It was already an accepted superstition by that time, but its origins - when Friday became the unluckiest 13th of them all - remain lost.
On a side note, British scientists conducted a study some ten years ago that demonstrated that while traffic was lighter on a Friday the 13th than a common Friday, accidents increased significantly. According to this study, your chances of being admitted to a hospital as a result of an auto accident were up more than 50%. The conclusion? "Staying at home is recommended." Psychologists at the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, NC, on the other hand, suggest that the heightened state of anxiety people feel about the 13th are responsible for some people having accidents or falling ill on that day.
Stay away from ladders and mirrors anyway. Just to be safe.
Friday the 13th is probably the best known superstition in the US. Those who will gleefully spill salt or step on cracks are still taken aback when that date turns up on the calendar. There was a Friday the 13th last February, but there won't be another until next May, the only one in 2005. (There was only one in 2003 as well, in June.) The fear of Friday the 13th is common enough to have its own term: paraskevidekatriaphobia. (Unlike triskaidekaphobia, which is simply fear of the number 13.) There is reason enough to fear: the US loses $800 to $900 million in business each Friday the 13th because people don't travel or go to work.
So how did all this nonsense get started?
It's hard to say. Both Friday and the number 13 have bad reputations, difficult as it is to imagine anyone having a bad thing to say about Friday. Chaucer may have been the first to write of it in English, in the Canterbury Tales. That he considers Friday a cursed day in the 14th century presumes the belief is already common. By the 19th century, superstitions regarding the day abound: it is a bad day to harvest, start a journey, get married or give birth, or begin or end needlework. (It's also a bad day to start a new job - "Servants who go into their situations on Friday, never go to stay" - though anyone who would start a job on a Friday is a fool, I tells ya.) One reason for this Friday phobia is religious: not only did the crucifixion happen on a Friday, but so (according to some sources) did Eve's sharing of the apple, the Great Flood and the babble at the Tower of Babel. Apparently Friday was Execution Day in Rome (following Prince spaghetti day on Wednesday), while in other pagan cultures it was a day of worship. No surprise, then, that it was demonized by the early Christian Church. "Friday" is, of course, named for the Norse goddess Freya (or Frigg), patron of marriage (or at least sex) and fertility. Once the Christians came along, Freya (with her sacred cat) was cast as a witch, and Friday became the Witches' Sabbath. In one story, Freya appeared to a group of a dozen witches meeting on a Friday night and gave them one of her cats, making 13 the traditional number for a coven.
13 is also the number of guests at the Last Supper, with Judas the last to arrive and the first to leave, giving rise to the belief that 1) it's unlucky to have 13 at a dinner party (and by extension, any gathering), and 2) that the first to leave such a gathering will die within the year. Here's another point where Christian and pagan tradition overlap. Norse mythology includes a tale of a dinner for 12 at Valhalla. Loki, the trickster god, crashed the party, bringing the number to 13. He subsequently convinced Hod, the blind god of winter (and darkness, and what have you) to hurl a spear of mistletoe (Merry Christmas!) at Baldur, the god of joy and goodness (and what have you). Baldur was invulnerable to everything BUT mistletoe (always a loophole, eh Achilles?), and so he was slain, plunging the earth into mourning and darkness. The Norse saw this as a reason why you shouldn't have 13 at a party, rather than, say, why you shouldn't throw things at people if you're blind. (The Hindus also believed that it is unlucky for 13 people to gather in one place, such as dinner, so there may be something to this.)
For the feminists out there, there's another reason why 13 is said to be unlucky. The number was revered by goddess-worshipping cultures because it corresponded to the number of lunar, and menstrual, cycles in a year. The "Earth Mother of Laussel," a 27,000 year old carving found near the Lascaux caves in France (where the paintings come from), depicts a female figure holding a crescent-shaped horn bearing 13 notches. According to this view, as the patriarchy replaced the matriarchy and the solar calendar triumphed over the lunar, the number 13 became considered evil.
So you've got your Friday, you've got your 13; how did these two great tastes start tasting great together? One theory links it to the destruction of the Knights Templar in 1307. The Knights were an order of religious warriors sent to guard Jerusalem following the Crusades, early in the 12th century. Remember the old guy at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? He's one. After a couple of centuries, the Knights had amassed enough power to make kings and popes pause. So on Friday, the 13th of October, 1307, Philip the Fair (Philip IV) of France rounded up their Grand Master and thousands of his followers, charging them with heresy, blasphemy, and yes, what have you. They were "questioned" by the Inquisition (everyone had an Inquisition in the Middle Ages), which is to say tortured. In the grand tradition of Christian justice, those who didn't die during questioning were executed once they confessed.
This is a fine explanation, and would be more convincing were knowledge of the history of the Knights Templar more widespread. In truth, references pairing Friday and 13 don't appear until the 20th century. It was already an accepted superstition by that time, but its origins - when Friday became the unluckiest 13th of them all - remain lost.
On a side note, British scientists conducted a study some ten years ago that demonstrated that while traffic was lighter on a Friday the 13th than a common Friday, accidents increased significantly. According to this study, your chances of being admitted to a hospital as a result of an auto accident were up more than 50%. The conclusion? "Staying at home is recommended." Psychologists at the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, NC, on the other hand, suggest that the heightened state of anxiety people feel about the 13th are responsible for some people having accidents or falling ill on that day.
Stay away from ladders and mirrors anyway. Just to be safe.
posted by John Bliss at
9:34 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home