We’re a superstitious lot in the West. It seems appropriate to comment on it as its Friday the 13th.
I realised the other day that I had absolutely no idea why this notorious Friday was singled out as being so special. After all, Thursday the 12th is just as rare. What sparked my interest was a chat I was having with a mate, who pointed out to me that it was cheaper to fly on Friday the 13th than it is on any other Friday.
Why would that be? Especially when you consider that most people don’t really know why Friday 13th is supposed to be unlucky.
Like most things that are utterly unquestioned and blindly followed, the idea probably sprang from Christian myth. Thirteen has been considered an unlucky number since Christ sat down to his last Supper. There is even a superstition that having thirteen people seated at a table will result in the death of one of the diners.
In numerology, thirteen is considered an irregularity, as it transgresses the completeness of number twelve, “as reflected in the twelve months of the year, twelve hours of the clock, twelve gods of Olympus, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve Apostles of Jesus.”
And according to Christian scripture and tradition, Jesus was crucified on a Friday… how could they possibly know this…really?
Friday has been considered an unlucky day at least “since the 14th century's The Canterbury Tales, and many other professions have regarded Friday as an unlucky day to undertake journeys, begin new projects or deploy releases in production.” Wikipedia
So the unlucky day itself is probably a modern amalgamation of these ideas, as the concept of a Friday the 13th was not in written evidence before the 19th century. “The earliest known documented reference in English occurs in Henry Sutherland Edwards' 1869 biography of Gioachino Rossini.” Wikipedia.
The idea really spread in 1907, when Thomas W Lawson published a highly popular novel named Friday, the 13th, and of course, there was that film that re-lit the mythological fires on the subject…
But there is no evidence, only fictional supposition, to support the idea that Friday the 13th is unlucky, any more than there is evidence to support the idea that Monday the 16th is lucky. (Just don’t tell the airlines this!)
Did you know that the fear of Friday the 13th is called friggatriskaidekaphobia? Try telling someone that!
Can you believe we live in an age of such insecurity, that we have to invent names for phobias created by fiction?
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