Welcome back my friends to the flamboyance that never ends. Greetings pop pickers and please be welcome to tonight’s Fabulously Flamboyant Friday and another of our fortnightly mastications upon the marshmallowy pillows of musical magnificence.
Tonight, dear reader, as we respectfully mark the middle of Pride month, Ivory Cutlery (numb of buttock, sore of foot and tired of limb) will once again be taking the night off.
I’m currently labouring in the hot and sweaty (but very pretty) south of France and I’m afraid the onerous pressure of being a full-time useless pillock has somewhat limited my opportunities for detailed, rigorous and fact-checked research.
Accordingly, tonight’s missive will be a shoddy and shambolic affair; a puerile stream of consciousness, written rapidly in a succession of shabby hotels and smelly French cafes.
And so, without further ado, laydees and gentlebodies, Fabulously Flamboyant Fridays proudly present… *shuffles through notebook…* Well spank my lube tube and call me Susan. Just look at the date. Blimey! It’s the day of dread for unlucky buggers everywhere – Friday 13th. Not Arf!
Friday the 13th: a date long steeped in superstition, particularly in Western cultures. Oft’ viewed as a harbinger of bad luck and, whilst by no means a universal view, the superstitions associated with this date seem to have their roots deep in our religious, mythological and historical narratives.
There are of course varying interpretations across different societies, but the primary reasons for Friday the 13th’s unlucky status in Western cultures appears to be closely tied to Christian tradition and, in particular, to the events surrounding the death of Christ.
Many seem to believe the superstition originates from the Last Supper, where Jesus dined with his 12 apostles, making a grand total of 13 dudes. Judas Iscariot, who in this narrative was the 13th guest, is of course infamous for being the sneaky, low-life, scum-sucking snitch who betrayed Jesus, leading to his crucifixion the following day. As the next day is traditionally held to have been a Friday – Good Friday – this dual association of the number 13 being linked to betrayal and the day of Friday being linked to a rather significantly misfortunate* biblical incident – seems to have created a potent combination in Christian tradition.
* by the way, do you like this “misfortunate” word? It’s apparently a neologism. Presumably a portmanteau combination of misfortune and unfortunate. I spotted it on a pigeon English news site and was rather taken by it – mostly because I suspect my use of it will irritate Lady Cutlery no end.
However, Iscariot’s shenanigans were by no means the first biblical bad moves to be associated with a Friday: Adam and Eve are said to have enjoyed their forbidden fruit-based picnic on a Friday, Cain is alleged to have bumped off brother Abel on a Friday, and the Temple of Solomon was apparently toppled on a Friday. I have to admit, there does seem to be a somewhat significant pattern of biblical misfortunates emerging here – and hats off to the meticulous minions who diligently maintained the diary records. Damn fine effort, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Noah’s watery wanderings are also believed to be associated with a Friday. He apparently cracked his champagne on the bow, weighed anchor and promptly set sail on a fortuitous Friday, thus dodging the catastrophic effects of climate change, which quite frankly seems like jolly good timing to me and rather good luck as well – unless of course you were one of the soon-to-be-soggy (and no doubt Brexity) climate deniers left behind, I suppose.
More recent historical events would also seem to play a role in the dour reputation of Friday the 13th, though their exact influence is most certainly up for debate. King Philip IV of France chips in with a splendid example as he apparently called for the arrest of hundreds of Knights Templar on Friday, October 13, in 1307.
King Phil then rubbed salt into the wound by ensuring a substantial number of them there Templar types were executed in a variety of grizzly ways. You will frequently see this event cited as the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition. However, as this claim was popularized by Dan Brown in his staggeringly tedious novel, The Da Vinci Code, others will vociferously argue that it’s just as likely to be complete and utter bunkum.
Additionally, if we cast our net beyond Christianity, there is ample evidence to suggest the number 13’s association with bad luck, misfortune and sneaky shenanigans pre-dates Christian tradition by quite some time. Norse mythology, for example, offers the traditional tale of a rather splendid banquet in Valhalla. This sumptuous feast was originally attended by 12 gods, all noble, just and true. However, Loki, the god of mischief (a shape-shifting god who could change sex at will – now that sounds like great Friday night gig!) apparently gate-crashed the party, bringing the total number of guests up to the unlucky number of 13 (and he probably didn’t bring no bottle ‘n’ bird neither).
Not content with being a boor and crashing the party – which no doubt had a jolly decent free bar – Loki then set about deceiving poor old Hodr (the blind god of winter and darkness) and befuddled him into bumping off Balder (son of Odin, brother of Thor and the god of light) with a mistletoe-tipped arrow, no less – once again linking the number 13 to death, mayhem, general disorder and no doubt Captain Chaos, as well.
Then we have tarot cards, which have been knocking around since at least the 13th century (and probably a bit earlier) that usually designate the card that represents Death as the 13th card in the series. And fast forward to the 20th century and the British submarine HMS K13 sank during her sea trials in early 1917, sadly killing 32. When patched up, re-named (as K22) and re-launched, I’m afraid her luck didn’t change. She was involved in various messy collisions in which a total of 103 souls were lost. When the K class boats were replaced by the subsequent L class, the number L13, unsurprisingly, was not used.
Apollo 13 was famously launched at 13:13 in 1970, and a few days later, on April the 13th, an oxygen tank ruptured, forcing Apollo 13 to abort its mission and head for home a bit sharpish. For a while it all looked somewhat dodgy for the crew, but happily for our tale they all made it safely back to terra firma. It should be noted that more than a few believe the entire incident was staged as a psy-op, presumably to revive flagging public interest (i.e. taxpayer support) for the staggeringly expensive Apollo Moon programme. Once I would have scoffed at such a suggestion, these days it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
Even today, many multi-storey buildings avoid having a 13th floor and several notable streets in London (e.g. Fleet Street, Park Lane, Oxford Street, Praed Street, St. James’s Street, Haymarket and Grosvenor Street) were all originally numbered to exclude the number 13.
As we can see from the above, the number thirteen really does quite well on its own, an’ quite frankly don’t need no stinkin’ help from no stinkin’ unlucky Fridays. As Babylonians and Mayans both seem to have viewed the number 13 with great mistrust, and Persian lore argues for utter chaos in the 13th millennium – and with even the average number of 13 menstrual cycles per year (only for ladies without todgers, apparently) being suggested as the root cause of our unlucky 13 superstition, this all suggests the number 13 has probably been associated with bad luck and ill omen from long before the development of Christianity.
However, getting back on topic to the unlucky combination of Friday and the number 13, we can be certain that by the 19th century a number of literary references to Friday the 13th being a day of misfortune and bad luck begin to crop up with pleasing regularity. Then, in 1907, a very successful novel called Friday the 13th (written by Thomas W. Lawson) was published and told a tale of cataclysmic financial ruin on the dreaded date. This novel is believed by many to have done a great deal to popularise the superstition and embed it firmly into our contemporary culture. Interestingly, there was a genuine stock market crash (Black Friday) that kicked off on Friday the 13th in October, 1989.
It’s not of course a universal superstition and there are a few interesting cultural variations around western nations: In Greece and Spanish-speaking countries, it is generally Tuesday the 13th that is usually considered to be a day of ill omen. In Italy, however, it is often Friday the 17th that is met with fear and trepidation by those poor souls of a superstitious nature.
From a scientific perspective, of course, there would seem to be no evidence at all to support the notion of Friday the 13th being inherently unlucky. Behavioural psychologists will no doubt point the finger at expectation bias, suggesting people will simply notice bad events more on this date due to our now thoroughly embedded cultural bias. This also aligns quite nicely with the concept of “magical thinking,” where unrelated factors are believed to have causal relationships. They’re probably right, but psychologists, quite frankly, are in no position to throw stones, as many – and I count myself amongst them – consider much of modern psychology to be little more than (in the splendidly chosen words of the late, great Richard Feynman) “cargo cult science”.
Of course, popular culture in the latter part of the 20th century also did much to amplify the superstition, particularly through the 1980s. The late ’70s and ’80s were the golden age of slasher movies, with films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween becoming hugely influential. The “Friday the 13th” slasher franchise of the 1980s (featuring the mask-faced, machete-wielding character of Jason) was very successful for a series of low-budget horror flicks and did much to reinforce the date’s association with grizzly horror and terminal bad luck.
This media influence, alongside our pre-existing cultural, historical and religious narratives, has now thoroughly embedded the superstition deep into our modern consciousness. In fact, because there are now so many people who claim to have a genuine and debilitating fear of Friday the 13th (with an estimated 19 million sufferers in the U.S. alone) there is now an official term for this malady: paraskevidekatriaphobia – fear of Friday the 13th. Kerching! Yet another phobia from which, I suspect, psychologists will ensure they do very nicely indeed.
Anyway, whatever the true origins of the superstition, I wish you a trouble-free Friday the 13th with not the slightest hint of misfortunates or paraskevidekatriaphobia to darken your soul.
TTFN, Puffins. May all your passages be salubrious, your gardens inclined and your puddles well jumped.
Goodnight, and may your frog go with you – Not ‘arf!
Featured Image: Generated by Grok A.I.
© Ivory Cutlery 2025
