Friday the 13th—the unluckiest day of
the year. Or so the story goes. An article in the Friday, January
13, 1928 Elkhart Truth argues otherwise. Headlined “THE LUCKIEST
DAY---FRIDAY THE 13TH,” the article, presumably from a wire
service, points out that “Friday and the number 13, either together
or separately, have played a large and beneficial part in American
history”
“To begin with, it’s supposed to be
the height of ill luck to be born on Friday the 13th. Yet General
John J. Pershing, war-time commander of the A.E.F. [American
Expeditionary Force] was born on such a date, and it must be admitted
that he has risen pretty high for a man whose life began under an
unfavorable star.” Pershing, the commander of American forces in
what was then known as the Great War or the World War (it
wouldn’t be called World War I until there was a World War II), was
born September 13, 1860.
Our first president usually signed his
name Geo. Washington—thirteen letters. On June 13, 1778, France
decided to aid the United States militarily, “and thus made certain
the success of the war for independence.”
Readers of Dan Brown’s recent novel,
The Lost Symbol, will be familiar with some of the Founding
Fathers’ obsession with thirteen: “Some found it suspicious that
the Great Seal of the United States had thirteen stars, thirteen
arrows, thirteen pyramid steps, thirteen shield stripes, thirteen
olive leaves, thirteen olives, thirteen letters in annuit coeptis,
thirteen letters in e pluribus unum, and on and on.” (p.
146)
Of course, the reason for the
“thirteen” symbolism is obvious: The thirteen colonies
represented in the Continental Congress of 1776 became the thirteen
original states.
At the time that congress declared
American independence, Friday the thirteenth may not have been
considered unlucky. According to the Wikipedia article on Friday
the 13th, folklorists say there is no written evidence of the
superstition until the mid-nineteenth century. All of the theories
of the superstition’s origin--including the one made popular by Dan
Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code, that on Friday, October 13,
1307, French king Philip the Fair ordered the mass arrest of all the
Knights Templar in France—are little more than speculation.
So if you suffer from
paraskevidekatriaphobia (Greek—paraskevi [Friday],
dekattreís
[thirteen], and phobia [fear], take heart: here in the States
it’s a lucky number.
