Friday, August 13, 2010

Friday the 13th

Happy Friday, everyone!  I hope you all have either super exciting plans for the weekend or plans that involve lots of relaxing (whichever is your preference)!  As mentioned earlier, the husband turns 30 today so we're having a party for him tonight and then the rest of our weekend is pretty wide open.  He's working on Sunday so I'm really hoping to get our master bedroom curtains finished - we'll see just how motivated I am when Sunday actually gets here (if it's anything like my motivation to do them this week has been, it's not looking too promising because I really wanted to have them finished before the party tonight - oh well).

Image found here

Anyways, in honor of it being Friday the 13th, and the only Friday the 13th of 2010 (don't believe me, go ahead and grab a calendar - I'll wait) I thought it would be fun to do a little post about why Friday the 13th is such a superstitious day.  Did you know that there's actually a word for the fear of Friday the 13th (I didn't) - it's paraskevidekatriaphobia and apparently almost 21 million Americans suffer from it?  It also costs businesses an estimated $900 billion because so many people refuse to go out and about.

It turns out that most of the superstitions surrounding Friday the 13th have their origins in religion.  Many Christians believe that Friday is unlucky because this is the day on which Jesus was crucified.  13 was also believed to be unlucky by Christians during the dark ages because of paganism (13 was lucky for them because there were 13 lunar cycles).  Put the two together and apparently you're just doomed!  There's your history lesson for the day!

How do you guys feel about Friday the 13th?  Honestly, I just think of it as another day, but the husband thinks it's lucky for him - interesting fact: his golden (13 on the 13th) birthday also fell on Friday the 13th.

Have a great weekend!  See you all Monday!

Amber

1 comment:

Miss Chelsea said...

That's interesting... I wonder if I can convince my boss I need to leave work early because I have paraskevidekatriaphobia and am not comfortable being out my house ;)