Answers To Why We...

Why Is Friday The 13th An Unlucky Day?

The origins aren't perfectly clear, but we do know that both Friday and, separately, the number 13 have long been considered unlucky and it was around the late 19th century that the first documented instances started popping up of people putting the two together to form the unluckiest day of all.

The most popular theory for why Friday is considered unlucky or an evil day is thought to spring from Christianity. By tradition, Friday is considered the day that Eve gave Adam the "apple" and they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

Also by tradition, Adam and Eve were said to have died on the then nonexistent "Friday". The Temple of Solomon was said to have been destroyed on Friday. And Jesus was traditionally considered to have been crucified on a Friday, the day we refer to now as Good Friday.

Others believe that Friday being unlucky started before Christianity.  The name "Friday" was chosen in honor of the Norse goddess Frigg, also known as Freyja, who was the multitalented goddess of love, beauty, wisdom, war, death, and magic.  Teutonic people are thought to have considered the day extremely unlucky, especially for weddings, due in part to the lovely goddess the day was named for. Later, the Christian church attempted to ruin the goddesses reputation so that may or may not be a contributing factor as well.

Whatever the case, Friday was popularly considered unlucky among the masses around the mid-17th century.  Within the next two centuries the idea continued to spread and by the 19th century was very important in certain cultures.

As for the unluckiness of the number 13, as with Friday, there are numerous possibilities for the origin, the most popular also stems from Christianity. It is considered incredibly bad luck to have 13 people sitting at a table for dinner, which supposedly is due to the fact that Judas Iscariot was  the 13th person to be seated to dine at the Last Supper.

However, the Hindus also believed that it was bad luck for 13 people to gather together for any purpose at the same time.

Far away in northern Europe, the Vikings of ancient times told a very similar story.  According to the old Norse myth, 12 gods were feasting at the banquet hall at Valhalla, when Loki, the god of Mischief, showed up uninvited. This, of course, brought the count of gods up to the dreaded number of 13. Loki then encouraged Hod, the blind god of winter and darkness, to murder Balder the Good with a spear of mistletoe, throwing all of Valhalla into mourning, and once again providing another example of a story in history that congregating with 13 for dinner is a bad idea.

So why all these separate religions having such a similar tradition of  demonizing the number 13?  There are those that theorize the number 13 may have been purposely made unlucky by the founders of the certain religions to stop the influence of the Mother Goddess. In goddess worshipping cultures, the number 13 was often change, as it represented the number of lunar and menstrual cycles that occur annually. It is believed by those who believe this theory that as the 12-month solar calendar came into use over the 13-month lunar calendar, the number 13 itself became unlucky.

As with the notion of Friday being unlucky, "13" being popularly considered unlucky really seemed to gain steam around the 17th-18th centuries, and by the 19th century in the Western world was likewise extremely widespread in several different cultures.

So when did Friday and the number 13 join together to form the unluckiest if unluckiest days. You'll often read that it's when the Knights Templar were arrested on Friday, October 13, 1307.  However, that origin story is not documented history.

Others point to the last day of King Harold II's reign on Friday, October 13, 1066. William of Normandy took Harold's crown by force at the Battle of Hastings, causing Harold's demise.  Again, it is a modern idea that this is where the first "Friday the 13th is the ultimate unlucky day" notion came about.

Friday the 13th was not considered unlucky in Italy,with 13 being often considered a lucky number there until extremely recently when Western European and American influence started to change that. For Italians, classically, 17 was the unlucky number and thus Friday the 17th became the Italian version of Friday the 13th.

Psychologists also point to the fact that if anything negative happens on Friday the 13th, people make a permanent connection between the event and the date in their minds. They forget all those times Friday the 13th has passed uneventfully.  Overall it is biased.

Humans are weird, right?