Tag Archives: Superstition

Celebrate 9’s but don’t celebrate 10’s

Text: “Many Chinese people, especially the older generations, won’t celebrate 10, 20, 30, etc because of the way the numbers are pronounced. [Ten] also sounds like the word ‘dead” and, in Chinese, twenty is ‘two-ten,’’ thirty is “three-ten,” and so on”

Context: My informant is Chinese and has grown up close to her relatives, especially as they aged. These are traditions that she remembered seeing in her childhood.

Analysis: This practice seems to be an age-related birthday ritual. As my informant described, “ten” in Chinese sounds like their word for “death.” Thus, it seems that to celebrate a “ten” birthday would be like inviting death. Chinese culture as a whole has many superstitions related to longevity. There seems to be a cultural fixation on living a long life, much more so than in American culture. I believe this is because, in Chinese culture, elders matter much more. For instance, in China, it is legally and culturally required for children to care for their aging parents to show respect and make up for the time their parents spent raising them. In America, it is much more common to see seniors taken care of by paid professionals in care facilities or living on their own. America, conversely, seems to place much more emphasis on youth. Proverbs like “Live fast, die young” and the idea of “peaking” early in life make old age not something to be revered, but tolerated in hopes of living vicariously through your kin. So, while the Chinese have many superstitions about avoiding death in old age, as is evidenced by my informant’s declaration that mostly old people subscribe to this superstition, Americans do not. 

Folk Belief: Sharing Food with a Pregnant Woman

Age: 24
Occupation: Paraprofessional

[Do you have anything you would like to share?]

‘I do remember this superstition my family had when I was younger. It was like we couldn’t share food with a pregnant woman. Like if they ate from a bowl and offered it to us, we could accept the bowl but we weren’t supposed it eat it.”

[Was it for the health of the mother? Or seen as bad luck?]

“It was like, you know how pregnant people get morning sickness? It was like you would get the morning sickness. I remember when I was younger, being with family, and my mother telling me not to eat from the same bowl as one of my aunts. I did anyway, and I actually ended up throwing up later that night.”

Analysis: I think that this superstition is unique in the sense that I think most folklore surrounding pregnancy has to do with the health of the mother or protecting/ promoting fertility, so having a folk belief surrounding how the health of a pregnant person could impact others is really interesting. Additionally, morning sickness here is treated less as a symptom and more as a contagious sickness, which I never really considered.

Folk Belief: String on Finger

Age: 24
Occupation: Paraprofessional

“I’m not sure if it has an actual name, but it’s like if you get a stye on your eye, it means you saw something you shouldn’t have. You would then tie a black string around your finger- I can’t remember, either middle or ring- 12 or 13 times. You would keep it there until it fell off to ward of bad luck”

[Would you do this yourself?]

“No, it was mostly my grandmother and sometimes my mother. Oh! And it also had to be done on the left hand.”

Analysis: There’s a lot to unravel here (like a string, haha): beginning with the stye on the eye, I think that many cultures consider the eyes “windows to the soul”, so it makes sense that any particular harm to the eye would be considered very serious. Additionally, there’s this “seeing something you shouldn’t have” element, which has manifested itself into a physical bump on the body. There’s a lot of folklore surrounding the idea of karma, which I think this also exemplifies: you saw something you shouldn’t, so now you have a bump and the possibility of bad future luck. What I find particularly interesting is the number of times the string must be wrapped around the finger: In many cultures, 13 can be considered an unlucky number, but here, it is used as protection against bad luck.

Folk Belief: Don’t whistle indoors

Age: 20

“This was something I definitely got yelled at for when I was younger, but Its bad to whistle in the house, or maybe just in general. You will go broke that way.

[Why is that? Just coincidence?]

“I think it comes from this old tale, or habit? Russians/ Slaves kept their money in their mouths (very poor folk who needed to hide stuff or something like that). Whistling would cause people literally lose their last dollar. I think also, it’s seen as kind of like, foolish? Like, if you’re dumb enough to just sit and whistle, you probably aren’t good with money.”

Analysis: There are many folk beliefs that include whistling as bad, mostly when it comes to whistling in a certain location. This folk belief is interesting because of how it includes the consequences of losing your money through a historical tale (or habit?), not just “generally bad luck”. Although the practice of holding money in your mouth isn’t held today, the belief still remains: transcending time and social practice. Additionally, this belief isn’t only held in people who experienced financial hardship, which is an interesting case of folklore spreading to places not within its original group (like to those who were more well off).

Sports Hoodie

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: United States
Language: English

Text:

“Anytime ACFC is playing I have to wear my ACFC hoodie or else it’s a guaranteed loss.”

Context:

The informant started doing this in freshman year because nobody cared about women’s soccer and they wanted to market for it. They state that it’s important to them to encourage people to watch women’s soccer and also believed in doing this after wearing it watching their first game and their team won because of it.

Analysis:

This idea marks magical superstition as a ritual behavior is performed with the hopes of influencing the game. More specifically, this acts as sympathetic magic, where the action of wearing the hoodie will influence and help boost the chances of the team winning, and apotropaic magic with the idea of warding off bad luck. In addition, if the person fails to wear the hoodie then the game would be doomed from the start, creating a sense of avoidance ritual by continuously wearing the hoodie so there will be a chance for a victory. Besides representing magical superstition, this also emphasizes material culture with the hoodie. Some people, most that are outside of the sports community, would believe this to be a normal hoodie that one wears with market value, but the informant has a deeper connection to the material. They find it to have a deep personal meaning to the object that makes it invaluable and even giving power to the hoodie, which now acts as a talisman associated with good luck. This ritual behavior establishes identity with the sports folk group as well as acting as a tool that eases anxiety towards a game. It might also act as an explanation as to why a game won or failed with whether or not the hoodie was worn. Because there was a correlation between the object and the victory, the object then develops more power and is seen as something that influences the outcome of a game.