Take Me to Your Paraskevidekatriaphobics

If you're reading this from home (as opposed to sneaking a quick look at work) then you may share some of the 'paraskevidekatriaphobic' tendencies that (allegedly) impact significantly on the US economy:

The Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina estimates that in the United States alone, $800 or $900 million is lost in business each Friday the 13th because some people will not travel or go to work.¹

Yes indeed, another Friday the 13th has (unluckily for some) rolled around, so perhaps it might be appropriate to pause and ask what the possible roots of the paraskevidekatriaphobic condition actually are.

As the word itself suggests, superstitions concerning Friday the 13th combine two distinct bad-luck assocaitions – fear of the number 13 (Triskaidekaphobia), and the day Friday. The combination of these two elements creates the hybrid monster of extreme unluckiness that is 'Friday the 13th'.

So where, exactly, does the fear of Friday itself come from? Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable offers us the following:

Friday was regarded by the Norsemen as the luckiest day of the week, when weddings took place, but among Christians it has been regarded as the unluckiest, because it was the day of crucifixion. While no longer a day of compulsory abstinence for Roman Catholics they are urged to set Friday apart for some voluntary act of self-denial.[...]Friday is the Sabbath for Muslims, who hold that Adam was created on a Friday and that it was on Friday that Adam and Eve ate the Forbidden Fruit and on Friday that they died. It is also held unlucky among Buddhists and Brahmans.²

Interesting stuff. Not being a biblical scholar I suppose I'd ask the (obvious) question: Did a fear of Friday (among Christians) arise because of its associations with the crucifixion of Christ, or, has Friday become the accepted day of the crucifixion because of a prevalent (and pre-existing?) fear of Fridays? Answers on a postcard please…

As for negative associations with the number 13, numerous explanations have been posited, and I include a sample below:

1. Its origins can be traced to Norse mythology and a dinner party at Valhalla, home of the god Odin, where Odin and 11 of his closest god-friends were gathered one night to party. Everyone was having fun, but then Loki, the dastardly god of evil and turmoil, showed up uninvited, making it a crowd of 13. The beloved god Balder tried to boot Loki out of the house, the legend goes, and in the scuffle that followed he suffered a deathblow from a spear of mistletoe.³
2. [The most common explanation stems] from another Christian source, the Last Supper, at which Judas Iscariot was said to have been the thirteenth guest to sit at the table…This Christian symbolism is reflected in early Western references to thirteen as an omen of bad fortune, which generally started to appear in the early 18th century and warned that thirteen people sitting down to a meal together presaged that one of them would die within the year.⁴
3. Thomas Fernsler, an associate policy scientist in the Mathematics and Science Education Resource Center at the University of Delaware in Newark, said the number 13 suffers because of its position after 12. According to Fernsler, numerologists consider 12 a 'complete' number. There are 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 tribes of Israel, and 12 apostles of Jesus. In exceeding 12 by 1, Fernsler said 13′s association with bad luck "has to do with just being a little beyond completeness. The number becomes restless or squirmy."⁵
4. Theory…suggests the number 13 was purposely upheld by the priests of patriarchal religions because it represented femininity. Thirteen was allegedly revered in prehistoric goddess-worshiping cultures because it corresponded to the number of lunar (menstrual) cycles in a year (13 x 28 = 364 days).⁶

I'm sure there are a plethora of other examples/explanations which fústarers could suggest, but all this talk of 'The Last Supper', Numerology, and Patriarchal Religion has stirred the muse in me and I feel a Dan Brown-esque blockbuster coming on. It's either that or indigestion…

1. NationalGeographic.com [back]
2. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (London: Cassell, 1999) [back]
3. Salon [back]
4. Snopes.com [back]
5. NationalGeographic.com [back]
6. Scottbruno.com [back]