Showing posts with label superstition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label superstition. Show all posts

March 13 – Open an Umbrella Indoors Day

Posted on March 13, 2016

Don't walk under a ladder, or you'll have bad luck!

If a black cat crosses your path, you'll have bad luck!

If you break a mirror, you'll have bad luck – SEVEN YEARS of bad luck!

If you step on sidewalk crack, you'll have bad luck!

If you open an umbrella indoors, you'll have bad luck!

According to superstitions, there are lots of ways to bring bad luck down on yourself. But of course, I'm sure you know that these are silly bits of folklore that – although they have been handed down for generations – haven't got a shred of truth to them.

I mean, let's face it, every day bad things AND good things happen to all of us. We could look carefully at every day and think, “Well, here's an example of good luck, and here is an example of bad luck.” But the truth is, there really is no such thing as “luck.”

Everything that happens, good or bad, has an explanation. Sometimes the explanation isn't very satisfying. For example, a person was careful all of her life not to smoke, not to live in a place with air pollution, not to work in a job where she has to breathe toxic chemicals – and yet she still gets lung cancer. The explanation may be that she inherited bad genes. That explanation seems not only unsatisfying, it seems unfair! But it still might be true.

Here's another example: A couple of friends may enter prize drawings every week at the library summer reading program, and one friend may win three times over the course of the summer, while the other friend may not win at all. Again, it seems totally unfair! And we may want to say, X has good luck, and Y does not. But the truth is probably that X the winning and the not-winning were just chance.

A man named Thomas E. Knibb started National Open an Umbrella Indoors Day to encourage people to notice that, when they break the superstitious rules, nothing happens. Well, of course, stuff DOES happen, and like always, it is a mix of good and bad stuff. But there isn't a sudden, dramatic uptick of bad things happening after you open an umbrella indoors.

Check and see!

NOTE: Obviously, opening umbrellas anywhere can be tricky. If you aren't careful, you could knock something off a shelf or counter, or you could poke someone, when you open an umbrella. So...be careful!

Of course, to celebrate Open an Umbrella Indoors Day, you could do more than just test out superstitions.


You could create a private play spot...


decorate a room with a large garden-sized umbrella... 


build an umbrella fort (probably outside, where you have more space!)...






Also on this date:


Daylight Savings Time begins






















Decoration Day in Liberia





















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May 23 – Lucky Penny Day

Posted May 23, 2015


“See a penny, pick it up...
All the day, you'll have good luck!”

That familiar almost-rhyme is either much easier to follow, these days, or much tougher to follow. I'm not sure which! Watch out for pennies, and get back to me!

You see, pennies used to be worth something. You could buy so many kinds of candy for a penny a piece, stores used to call their bulk candy aisles “Penny Candy.” (Also, there was a 1954 song by that name!) 

Now, a single piece of candy - or even a gumball - is usually worth a nickel, a dime, or even more.

So, since you can't buy anything at all with a single penny, and since machines that accept coin payment for food don't accept pennies, I would think that hardly anyone would bother to pick up any pennies that happen to fall...And that would (it seems to me) make it a lot easier to find pennies.

But, on the other hand, since pennies are so worthless these days, most of us don't even want to bother with them in our pockets or coin purses, so we leave them in donation jugs or those little “take a penny, leave a penny” trays. And that would mean that there would be a lot fewer pennies falling in the first place, which would make it a lot harder to find pennies!

Are pennies really lucky?

Of course, picking up a penny cannot change your “luck.” The belief that it could is a superstition – a bit of folklore that tells us that people wished that they could control their lives, including all the uncontrollable things like weather and other people's and animals' behavior. In actual fact, good and bad things happen to everybody.

  • Educate yourself on how obsolete pennies are here.

Right now it takes more than two cents to make a
single penny. That means our government goes a
little bit more in debt with every penny it makes.

And it makes billions of pennies a year!
  • Educate yourself on what your old (and I mean really old) pennies are here


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August 17 – Black Cat Appreciation Day

Posted on August 17, 2014

Did you know that black cats are a LOT harder to place in adoptive homes than other colors of cats? Routinely, they are the last to be adopted...or they aren't adopted at all!





Back when I was a young parent, my kids and I were privileged to watch our family pet give birth to five adorable babies. We easily found good homes for all of the kittens EXCEPT the black kitty. We named him “Howie,” for Halloween, and we wanted to keep him, but we were living with a firm rule: only one cat. Luckily, my husband was able to find a long-term shelter that was a sort of cat heaven, for hard-to-adopt-out cats.

But why was adorable little Howie so hard to adopt out?

Long ago, in much of Western Europe, black cats were looked on by superstitious people as evil omens or the bringers of bad luck. Some thought that black cats were the “familiars” or animal guides of witches. Some even thought that a black cat crossing your path meant death!

So now you see why black cats are often associated with Halloween.

But now that modern people do not believe in spirits and magic and evil omens...well, I guess enough still shiver enough when they see a black cat that they at least prefer all the other colors of cats?



The fellow who created this holiday chose August 17 because his beloved sister died on this date just two months after her black cat died. The holiday is meant to honor his sister and her bond with her cat as well as get us to reconsider our preferences as to the colors of cats.



Also on this date:


The Meaning of “Is” Day

























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May 29 – Put a Pillow on Your Fridge Day

Posted on May 29, 2014

Is this really a thing?

Several websites talk about this holiday as if putting a pillow onto your refrigerator one day a year is something that a lot of people do. I have definitely never seen or heard of such a thing, myself – I wonder how widespread the custom really is!

If you, like me, don't know about the whole pillow-on-the-fridge thing, you are probably wondering why anyone would do such a thing. It turns out, it's supposed to bring people good luck and prosperity.

An old-fashioned larder.
Somehow, back in the mists of time, a custom got started of putting a cloth in the larder every May 29 for good fortune. That was back when people actually had larders – small rooms (or large cupboards) in which food was stored. These larders were located in the shadiest, coolest part of the house—but of course near the kitchen, and they were kept as cool and dry as possible so that food would keep as long as possible.

Nowadays, some of us are lucky enough to have walk-in pantries or at least large food-storage cupboards, but of course we all have refrigerators as well. Many of the things people used to store in a larder – vegetables and cheeses, meats and leftovers – we now store in the fridge. So somehow the custom of putting a cloth INTO the larder evolved into putting a pillow ONTO the refrigerator.

Are your customs based on superstitions?

A superstition is a belief that there will be some supernatural effect of wearing, saying, or doing certain things in a certain way. For example, a student might wear a “lucky” sweatshirt on test day, or an athlete might eat chicken before every game. Apparently basketball great Michael Jordan wore his University of North Carolina practice shorts under his Chicago Bulls uniform every game! In order to cover the UNC shorts, Jordan started wearing longer NBA shorts—and he inspired a style trend; now everybody wears longer shorts.



Basketball shorts before and after Michael Jordan.
Thank goodness for Michael Jordan!

This is pretty gross:
When I was a little girl, EVERYBODY
(yes, even me) had a rabbit's foot lucky
charm. You could feel the little bones and
toenails. Now it seems pretty horrifying!
Obviously, there is no evidence that a cloth in one's larder or a pillow on one's refrigerator on a particular day in May makes any difference in one's life. This is just a superstition. But a lot of things that start off as superstitions—things that people believed really WOULD bring good luck or ward off bad luck—become fun customs that people continue to do long after superstitious belief in their power has faded. (For example, colored eggs were supposed to protect the owner's health or bring good luck—but these days, most of us who color Easter eggs do it just for fun!)


Also on this date:























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