Today is Friday the 13th, 2019, and many Hindus are entertaining the superstition that this particular date is unlucky, but should we be involving ourselves in this Western tradition? According to National Geographic (here), the exact origins of Friday the 13th as an unlucky date are unclear. It would seem that the number 13 had negative connotations even in pagan times. In ancient Norse mythology, the trickster god Loki was the 13th guest to arrive at a dinner party among the gods where he tricked the blind god of darkness into shooting an arrow at the god of joy, and after the entire world was plunged into darkness. Some say 13 has pagan numerological underpinnings in so much that the number 12 is considered a number of completion with 12 months in the year, but the 12 month calendar was introduced with the Christian Gregorian calendar, before this time pagan calendars had different numbers of months, such as the Roman calendar which had 10 months.
It is unknown whether or not the pagans held Friday as an unlucky day, but it was the day of the goddess of love, Venus, and after this, it became the date of the Viking goddess Frigg, some say the Christians wanted to demonize goddess worship and so made the day of these goddesses unlucky. However, it would seem that there is no mention of the unlucky origins of Friday and the number 13 together until the Christian 19th century. This has led some scholars to believe that this invention of the unlucky nature of the coincidence of Friday and the number 13 to have Christian origins. At the last supper, Judas was the last and 13th person to arrive at the dinner table, and he later betrayed Jesus to the Romans. Jesus was also crucified on a Friday and so some say that this is where the unlucky nature of Friday came from.
Whether the origins of the myth are Christian or pagan might not matter to Hindus as the very existence of the persistence of Friday the 13th in our calendar has everything to do with the Gregorian calendar which was forced upon the pagans to uproot their own lunar-solar calendars. The quote below is from the National Geographic article on Friday the 13th (here)
They date goes back to at least ancient Roman times, but Friday the 13th superstitions won't be getting much of a workout this year. Luckily for triskaidekaphobia sufferers, 2011—like 2010 before it—has only one Friday the 13th.
By contrast, 2009 boasted three Friday the 13ths—the maximum possible in a year, at least as long as we continue to mark time with the Gregorian calendar, which Pope Gregory XIII ordered the Catholic Church to adopt in 1582.
"You can't have any [years] with none, and you can't have any with four, because of our funny calendar," said Underwood Dudley, a professor emeritus of mathematics at DePauw University in Indiana, and author of Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras Wrought.
The calendar works just as its predecessor, the Julian calendar, did, with a leap year every four years. But the Gregorian calendar skips leap years on century years except those divisible by 400. For example, there was no leap year in 1900, but there was one in 2000. This trick keeps the calendar in tune with the seasons.
The result is an ordering of days and dates that repeats itself every 400 years, Dudley noted. As time marches through the order, some years appear with three Friday the 13ths. Other years have two or, like 2011, one.
Curious Calendar Encourages Friday the 13th Superstitions
It's just that curious way our calendar is constructed, with 28 days in February and all those 30s and 31s," Dudley said.
When the 400-year order is laid out, another revelation occurs: The 13th falls on Friday more often than any other day of the week. "It's just a funny coincidence," Dudley said.
Richard Beveridge, a mathematics instructor at Clatsop Community College in Oregon, authored a 2003 paper in the journal Mathematical Connections on the mathematics of Friday the 13th.
He noted the 400-year cycle is further broken down into periods of either 28 or 40 years.
"At the end of every cycle you get a year with three Friday the 13ths the year before the last year in the cycle … and you also get one on the tenth year of all the cycles," he said.
2009, for example, was the tenth year of the cycle that started in 2000.
I have written on this blog (here) about another holiday which has everything to do with the Christian calendar and that is April Fools Day. In pagan calendars the beginning of the year was spring, around March/April, not the dead of winter in January. The only reason the New Year was moved to January was so it would coincide with Christian customs surrounding Jesus. The term "April Fools" was a way of chiding pagans who still celebrating the New Year in April, Christians calling them foolish.
If it were not for the Christian Gregorian calendar we would not have a Friday the 13th every year, and at least during modern times, it would seem that the superstition has a lot to do with Jesus and Christianity. Should Hindus take stock in Friday the 13th? It is a difficult question to answer, but it should be a reminder to us that we must suffer this date once a year at least only because of the uprooting of the Hindu calendar. Like April Fools Day, Friday the 13th is just another reminder of Christian hegemony over our times and seasons. In my opinion, Hindus should avoid entertaining this superstition.
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