Superstition – India

Cutting Nails After Dark

This superstition has been there for a long time in my family. My informant told me ever since she was a young girl, her mother used to tell her not to cut her nails after dark. She has passed on the same thing to her children. She has told me numerous times not to cut my nails and sometimes even my hair after it has gotten dark, usually 6pm. She always said that you will get bad luck if you cut your nails after dark.

She said that in the olden times when there was no electricity, it would be too dark to see your nails therefore you wouldn’t cut them. That has stayed on even now with such modern technologies such as light. It has been a passed on tradition of sorts that we do not cut our nails at night.

So basically the only reason my mother doesn’t want me to cut nails at night is because there wouldn’t be enough light, even though we have electricity. I think that this superstition is very funny and not valid at all. The only reason it was true was because back then they didn’t have lights inside of their houses. But with modern technology this is changed.

There are many different variations of this superstition. One main variation of it is, not to cut your hair after dark. The logic is the same as cutting your nails, you would cut your hair horribly wrong when there is not light. Just like the nails superstition this could be forgone in modern days, but because of tradition and heritage this is still kept as a family superstition.