So Unlucky: Interesting Facts About Friday the 13th!

Happy Friday the 13th everybody!
I think we should totally turn this into a holiday, rather than everyone being superstitious and jumpy and nervous and ticked off. (Being that I work in the mental health field, I am 100% convinced that Friday the 13th makes people slightly more crazy than usual! Hehe!)

Some interesting tidbits about how Friday the 13th got started (courtesy of Wikipedia):

• One theory states that it is a modern amalgamation of two older superstitions: that thirteen is an unlucky number and that Friday is an unlucky day.

• In numerology, the number twelve is considered the number of completeness, as reflected in the twelve months of the year, twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve hours of the clock, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve Apostles of Jesus, twelve gods of Olympus, etc., whereas the number thirteen was considered irregular, transgressing this completeness.

• There is also a superstition, thought by some to derive from the Last Supper or a Norse myth, that having thirteen people seated at a table will result in the death of one of the diners.
  

• 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 or begin new projects.

• Black Friday has been associated with stock market crashes and other disasters since the 1800s.
  

• It has also been suggested that Friday has been considered an unlucky day because, according to Christian scripture and tradition, Jesus was crucified on a Friday.

My favorite explanation of the superstition relating to Friday the 13th is the myth of the Knights Templar:

"Another theory about the origin of the superstition traces the event to the arrest of the legendary Knights Templar. According to one expert:

The Knights Templar were a monastic military order founded in Jerusalem in 1118 C.E., whose mission was to protect Christian pilgrims during the Crusades. Over the next two centuries, the Knights Templar became extraordinarily powerful and wealthy. Threatened by that power and eager to acquire their wealth, King Philip secretly ordered the mass arrest of all the Knights Templar in France on Friday, October 13, 1307 - Friday the 13th.

The connection between the superstition and the Knights Templar was popularized in the 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code. However, some experts think that it is relatively recent and is a modern-day invention. For example, the superstition is rarely found before the 20th century, when it became extremely common. One author, noting that references are all but nonexistent before 1907 but frequently seen thereafter, has argued that its popularity derives from the publication that year of Thomas W. Lawson's popular novel Friday, the Thirteenth,^[10] in which an unscrupulous broker takes advantage of the superstition to create a Wall Street panic on a Friday the 13th."

Not gonna lie... I probably love this legend because I'm obsessed with The Da Vinci Code. Ask Devon. I talk about it all the time. Love it.

Anyway, I hope that regardless of where the legend comes from, and regardless of if you're superstitious or not, I hope you have a fabulous Friday the 13th (because come on, it's still a FRIDAY!).

If anyone has any stories or comments re: bad luck, I'd love to hear them! Please leave a comment!

♥ xtine