Tag Archives: luck

Purdue University Bell Tower Superstition

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At Purdue University, there is a long-standing superstition that if you walk under the Bell Tower, where the university seal is, you will not graduate within four years.

Context

My informant is a 20 year old sophomore at Purdue University studying mechanical engineering. I was interested in learning about folklores surrounding other universities, and asked him if he could recall any fun ones he heard at Purdue. He shared that he learned about this superstition during his official freshman orientation, and that while he isn’t superstitious, he actively goes out of his way to walk around the tower just in case.

Analysis

What I found most interesting about this superstition is that compared to other university superstitions, which are often vernacular and informally transmitted throughout students, this legend was told to the students during their official freshman orientation. It may be possible that this legend started vernacular but became so famous that the university incorporated it as a “fun fact” at official meetings, which mirrors some of our lecture concepts of how folklore can often become commercialized, like Native American cultures often being popular costumes.

Another interesting component of this superstition is its function; at its surface, it functions as a warning with serious consequences, yet also creates a strong sense of school culture implicitly. To start, this superstition is transmitted to the new members of the Purdue students folk group, showing that it is an important element that only insiders can relate to. In addition, since the reason walking under this tower bringing bad luck is because it forces students to step on the university seal, it indirectly sends a message for the students to take pride and respect their university, as stepping on the official logo could symbolically be seen as a sign of disrespect.

Finally, such superstitions of not walking under a certain building or a touching a certain statue exists in various universities. Beyond the multiplicity of this genre of folklore, the fact that such superstitions continue to exist and influence the actions of students like my informant shows the power of long-standing folklore, regardless of the levels of belief. All in all, I find this tradition to have great cultural value in terms of school pride for students, but also a great exemplification of the key elements of folklore like multiplicity and the sense of belonging they create.

Pre-game ritual

TEXT

Interviewer: “All right, before we start, do you mind quickly introducing yourself?”

MC: “Yes, my name is ANONYMOUS, I’m a first year at USC studying bio”

Interviewer: “So what are some things you wish on to bring you good or bad luck?”

MC: “So growing up, I was raised a Catholic, so I would go to church pretty much every Sunday. I went through all the Catholic rituals, basically. I got like, the steps of becoming a true Catholic, like getting baptized, getting reconciliation, confirmation, all that. And basically, so that just brought me closer to Jesus. So, I would, before like, I was a big sports guy, so before every soccer game, basketball game, anything I would always send a quick prayer, just wishing God to look over me, my teammates, keep us, like, safe from injury, and help us just play a good game. I wasn’t, like, delusional in thinking, like, he could just make us win. I would just hope I could help us play our best, basically. And then others situations where I just, like, either whether it’s good times, bad times, I always like to send a quick prayer to God, like, just asking him to watch over me, my family, and just pray for good health.”

“And I feel like good luck stems from religion from being a good person. So I think I believe in karma, and like, if you do well, if you do good by others, good things will come to you, and vice versa. So, I don’t know, I’m probably not the most religious person in the world, like, I can’t tell you all the facts about the Bible and all that. I still have that faith, and I just think that faith in God is what defines the good and luck or bad luck. Because if you don’t believe it, of course it’s not gonna happen, you know what I’m saying?”

Interviewer: “Okay, so don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but could you go more in-depth on what the purpose of this is for you then? You mentioned that you know doing this act of praying won’t bring automatic divine intervention that guarantees success, but it also feels like based on the last part of your answer where you mention karma and other things you’re subconsciously hoping for some kind of supernatural effect from praying, which seems a bit contradictory to me.”

MC: “Yeah, totally. I don’t think it’s that divine interference. Like I said, everything that happens here, it’s like constituted by us, because we’re living, we’re doing it. But I believe that reassurance, that, like, that faith that you have, that he’s with you and he’s guiding you and he’s helping you, and he’s giving you the strength to keep pushing on. I just think that motivates me personally to, strive for success and even more. Like I don’t believe me sending a prayer to him saying, ‘Oh, please let me get a good grade on this exam.’ If I don’t spend the time studying and stuff, it’s not gonna happen, you know? I totally believe it’s like that second man on your shoulder just giving you words of advice, towards of wisdom, and just watching you over you.”

CONTEXT

My informant shared this story to me during a class discussion centered around good/bad luck omens we believed in. My informant is a freshman male student at USC studying biology. Based on the conversation, it seems that he uses this folklore as a source of reassurance before an important competition to bring him good luck.

ANALYSIS

As an individual who grew up around sports, the ritual the informant talked about was very familiar with me, as I personally saw similar rituals for athletes across both amateur and professional levels. This shows the multiplicity of folklore, where variations of such performances and gestures can be seen. At its surface, while the informant specified his religious affiliation with the Roman Catholic branch within Christianity, I believe this ritual could be considered one under the large folk group of individuals that believe in any type of religion. With that being said, what I mainly interpreted from our conversation was that this ritual expressed mostly personal values. The informant’s answer to my follow-up question and his explanation of the concept of having free-will suggests to me that his ritual doesn’t serve as a request for some level of supernatural help, but as a reminder to keep himself grounded and thankful for a higher being that allowed him to play in a particular sports game or explore other competitive interests. Thus, beyond this personal value this praying ritual holds for my informant, I also believe it illustrates the variety of spectrums that could come from this same ritual. Praying before an important match or event is something shared by millions of religious individuals, and while some may have a similar mindset as the informant, there’s likely millions that believe in the divine power religion holds and supernatural effects praying could have. Thus, I think this conversation was also a valuable learning opportunity to see that even within folk religion and groups that may practice similar practices, the actual belief or logic behind can be varying.

Cuban New Year Traditions: Grapes, Water, and Roasted Pig

“So my dad’s thing, his folklore I guess, is that on New Year’s you eat 12 grapes, one for each month of the coming year. Each grape is basically a wish, a month of good luck. And then you fill up pots and pans with water and you throw the water out to get rid of all the bad luck from the year before. And you bang the pots together to scare away any bad energy, bad mojo. That’s his Cuban heritage, that’s where all of that comes from.

And then more generally, for any big holiday, it’s just about getting the whole extended family together. Like everyone comes. And the food is a huge part of it. The main thing you’re always going to have is roasted pig, and then black beans, rice, and fried plantains. It’s not a gathering without those. The food is really the center of everything, honestly. That’s just how those family holidays work.”

Context: This is from my friend whose father is Cuban. The informant was relaxed and a little giggly about it, clearly fond of these memories. It’s about the specific rituals their family does on New Year’s Eve, and then more broadly the way big family holidays just always look a certain way, same food every time, same people crowded around the same table. Someone in the room kept kicking them partway through, which did not help.

Analysis: The way he describes it shows that he is not quite sure what category it belongs in. But that slight distance actually makes it more interesting, because it shows how folk traditions get transmitted within families without ever being formally taught. Nobody sat this person down and explained the symbolism of the grapes or the water. They just grew up watching it happen, and now they know it.

The grape-eating and pot rituals are recognizable from Cuban and broader Latin American New Year’s tradition, but what stands out here is less the rituals themselves and more the fact that they’ve survived the distance of immigration intact, still tied to a specific identity, still understood as distinctly Cuban even several generations in. Throwing water out to expel bad luck, banging pots to scare off evil, these are physical, almost theatrical acts, and that probably has something to do with why they stick. They’re hard to forget once you’ve seen them.

The food side of things is doing something a little different. Roasted pig, black beans, rice, plantains showing up at every single holiday isn’t really about any one occasion. It’s more like a recurring proof of belonging. The meal is the same because the family is the same, and making it together, eating it together, is how that continuity gets felt rather than just assumed.

This entry was posted in Calendar Custom, Festival, Food, Family Folklore and tagged Cuban heritage, New Year’s, grapes, luck, roasted pig, family gathering, Latin American tradition on 0420.

Find a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck

Text: “Find a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck”

Context: Informant is 79, white, female, living in North Idaho. To this day if she sees a penny she’ll pick it up and smile, thinking of the old phrase. She can’t remember where she learned this but thinks she was very young. 

Analysis: This is folk speech that invokes magic “supersition”, picking up the penny means good luck and the specific outcome is having that luck all day. Coins are often used in magic superstitions, tossing a coin in a well, a penny having a bad luck side. It’s especially interesting because coins operate in a weird state in our economics, they are our most tangible form of money but have little in the way of monetary value especially now to the point of becoming almost obsolete. I believe it’s this inbetween between worthlessness and value that makes it the perfect thing for superstition to focus on. It has value, thus is special, but not enough to covet or protect Thus we assign them superstitious values. But more than that it’s something that clearly brings my grandmother joy, it’s an event you can’t control and thus that superstition brings that joy almost randomly. The rhyme in the saying also makes it feel whimsical, which could be a reason it’s stuck around for my grandmother.

Baseball Curses

Nationality: American

Occupation: Student

Residence: San Diego, CA

Text:
“There are tons of curses in baseball but the two main ones are the Curse of the Billy Goat and the Curse of the Bambino. The Curse of the Billy Goat was placed on the Chicago Cubs after a man brought his pet goat to Wrigley for a world series game. The goat was annoying the fans sitting around him so security very reasonably tried to kick the guy and his goat out. This enraged the man, who declared that the Cubs would never win the World Series ever again. It took 108 years but the Cubs finally broke the curse in 2016. The other major curse is the curse of the Bambino, which happened to the Boston Red Sox after they traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees. It’s impossible to know why they would even consider trading the greatest player ever to their arch rivals, and after making the trade in 1920 they didn’t win the World Series until 2004.”

Context:

My friend described both of these curses as if they were fact, which he later justified by saying that there’s no way a team could go 108 years without winning a World Series unless they had been cursed. In general my friend takes a very analytical approach to baseball, and he is very interested in advanced statistics and sabermetrics, which made it more surprising he would accept superstition as fact. He said that the baseball community overall accepts both of these curses as being real, undeniable things that happened. When I asked him more about this he brought up multiple incidents that were “proof” that the curses were real. For the Red Sox he mentioned the Bucky F. Dent incident, where the worst hitter on the Yankees hit a home run to eliminate the Red Sox, and the Bill Buckner incident where a horrible error by the Red Sox’s first baseman allowed the Mets to beat the Red Sox in the World Series. For the Cubs he mentioned the Steve Bartman incident, where a Cubs fan interfered with play which led to a late inning meltdown eliminating the Cubs from the playoffs. Despite my friend being focused on the analytical, statistically backed aspects of baseball he firmly believes that these curses are real.

Analysis:

Like my friend, I am also interested in statistics. Out of curiosity I calculated the odds of a team going 108 years without winning a World Series because on the surface that feels like an impossibly long drought. Surprisingly, the odds of any one team not winning over a 108 year stretch is 57%, meaning that it is more likely than not for a team to suffer that long of a drought. This statistical quirk, combined with the incidents my friend listed when I questioned him, reveal a lot about how superstitions form. First, it feels impossible for a team to go 108 years without winning (even though the opposite is true), which leads to people questioning how that can happen. This leads to a theory being formed, in this case the theory being that these teams are cursed. Once the theory is formed, confirmation bias leads to random events being attributed to the curse. So many superstitions spawn from a desire to have a better understanding of the world, and in this case the superstitions appeared out of a desire to understand counterintuitive statistics.