Today is one of those days when a lot of people will be on the lookout for mishaps, misfortune and bad luck, for it is Friday the 13th.
According to various online information resources, the fear of Friday the 13th is called friggatriskaidekaphobia – Frigga being the name of the Norse goddess for whom ‘Friday’ is named and triskaidekaphobia meaning fear of the number 13. It also has a Greek derivative – paraskevidekatriaphobia.
Many think that fear of Friday the 13th is an ancient thing, yet it is not and there is little evidence of it ever being mentioned prior to the 19th century – around the time of the Industrial Revolution.
Several theories have been proposed about the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition. One theory states that it is a modern amalgamation of two older superstitions: That 13 is an unlucky number and that Friday is an unlucky day.
In Spanish-speaking countries, instead of Friday, Tuesday the 13th (martes trece) is considered a day of bad luck. The Greeks also consider Tuesday the 13th to be an unlucky day. Tuesday is considered to be dominated by the influence of Ares (Mars), the god of war.
But fear of this day is not limited to just a few people. Wikipedia quotes the Phobia Institute of North Carolina in saying that an estimated 21 million people in the US alone, are afraid of this day. Some people, even here in Malta, refuse to get on flights, go to work and even drive on Friday the 13th, costing businesses a fair amount of money.
But what is this paralysing fear exactly? Of course, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Friday the 13th is luckier or unluckier than other dates. In fact, research has shown that accident rates actually drop ever so slightly, because people seem to pay more attention than they do on other days.
Perhaps it is just a day when people’s pent-up fear and frustrations spill over, just because if there is a day for something to happen, it will be today – Friday the 13th.
As with any other superstition, one can read as much as they want into it. If you got a flat tyre today, rather than tomorrow, does that mean that the misfortune of the dastardly day has caught up with you? No, it means you drove over a nail, on this one particular day out of the 365 days in the year.
Of course, the media and television have a hand to play in all this, especially entertainment programmes that focus on what happens in terms of misfortune on this day. But, how many babies are born, how many people are cured of diseases and how many people avoid being hit by buses on Friday the 13th… on average, just as many as there were on Thursday the 12th.