Today is a day that often strikes fear in the superstitious, an eponymous day that creates trepidation, looking out for black cats or dodging sidewalk cracks out of concern for maternal health. Why do we do this? Wikipedia explains …
There is a common myth that the earliest reference to thirteen being unlucky or evil is from the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (circa 1780 BCE), where the thirteenth law is omitted … Some Christian traditions have it that at the Last Supper, Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th to sit at the table.[3] However, the Bible itself says nothing about the order at which the Apostles sat … Triskaidekaphobia may have also affected the Vikings—it is believed that Loki in the Norse pantheon was the 13th god — more specifically, Loki was believed to have engineered the murder of Balder, and was the 13th guest to arrive at the funeral.[6] This is perhaps related to the superstition that if 13 people gather, one of them will die in the following year. Another Norse tradition involves the myth of Norna-Gest: when the uninvited norns showed up at his birthday celebration—thus increasing the number of guests from ten to thirteen—the norns cursed the infant by magically binding his lifespan to that of a mystic candle they presented to him.
Ancient Persians believed the twelve constellations in the Zodiac controlled the months of the year, and each ruled the earth for a thousand years at the end of which the sky and earth collapsed in chaos. Therefore, the number is identified with chaos and the reason Persians leave their houses to avoid bad luck on the thirteenth day of the Persian Calendar, a tradition called Sizdah Bedar.
Even with these deep cultural roots for triskaidekaphobia, modern people have a different image in mind …
No word on whether or not that’s Rebecca Black behind the mask.
UPDATED: Maybe “friggatriskaidekaphobia?” That’s what The Huffington Post claims.
In fact, a study by the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina, suggests an estimated 17 to 21 million people in the United States are affected by a fear of this day … Supposedly, an estimated $900 million is lost in business on Friday the 13th, especially on the stock market. However, Dr. Glenn Pettengill, a professor of finance at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, doesn’t take much stock in that claim. Pettengill says the research shows that there’s no proof that Friday the 13th has any more of an effect on the stock market than Tuesday the 10th or Monday the 25th.
In fact, he says that Thursday the 13th would be more likely to be a bad day because it falls during a natural mid-week, mid-month slump.
Cross your fingers and hang in there!
[Source: Wikipedia]