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, Ivory Cutlery (sore of back, buttock, limb and foot) will be taking the night off. I’m currently labouring in the East End of London and I’m afraid the onerous pressure of being a full-time useless pillock has somewhat limited my opportunities for detailed, rigorous, fact-checked, Puffin-quality 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 loading bays.
And so, without further ado, laydees and gentlebodies, Fabulously Flamboyant Friday proudly presents… *shuffles through notebook* Well, spank my starfish and call me Susan. Just look at the date. Blimey! It’s the day of dread for unlucky buggers everywhere – Friday 13th. Not ’arf!
Fear of Friday 13th is not, of course, a universal superstition, and there are a few interesting cultural variations around the world. In Greece and some of the Spanish-speaking countries, it is generally Tuesday the 13th that’s considered to be a day of ill omen. In Italy, however, it is often Friday the 17th that’s met with fear and trepidation by superstitious members of the Dolmio bothering community.
Far more importantly (at least for Puffins of sound mind and impeccable musical taste), Taylor Swift (Going Postal’s musical Goddess-in-chief) is famously fond of the number 13 and considers it to be her lucky number. The blessed event of her birth took place on the 13th and she turned 13 on Friday the 13th. Her first album went gold in just 13 weeks and her first No. 1 single apparently had a 13-second intro. She also claims that every time she’s picked up an award, she’s been in the 13th row or the 13th seat, or sitting at table 13, and so on.
Nevertheless, Friday the 13th, despite all its positive associations for the Blessed Tay Tay, is a date long steeped in superstition, particularly in Western cultures. The date is often viewed as a harbinger of bad luck and misfortune, and the superstitions associated with it 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 appear 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 Christ dined with his 12 apostles, making a grand total of 13. 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 our Lord, leading to His crucifixion the following day. As the next day is traditionally held to have been a Friday – Good Friday – this association of both the number 13 and Friday with a rather grim biblical incident seems to have created a potent combination in Christian tradition.
However, Iscariot’s shenanigans were by no means the first biblical bad move 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.
Noah weighed anchor and set sail on a fortuitous Friday, thus dodging the catastrophic effects of climate change, which, quite frankly, seems like jolly good timing to me – unless, of course, you were one of the soon-to-be-soggy climate change deniers he very sensibly left behind – and hats off to the meticulous minions who diligently maintained the diary entries and recorded all these significant Fridays. Damn fine effort, I’m sure you’ll agree.
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 13 October 1307. He then rubbed salt into the wound by ensuring a substantial portion of their unlucky number were executed in a variety of gruesome and grisly ways. You will frequently see this event cited as the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition. However, as this claim was popularised by Dan Brown in his staggeringly tedious novel The Da Vinci Code, others might 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 predates Christian tradition by quite some time. Babylonians and Mayans also seem to have viewed the number 13 with great mistrust, and ancient Persian lore argues for utter chaos in the 13th millennium.
Norse mythology offers the tale of a rather splendid banquet in Valhalla, originally attended by 12 gods, all noble, just and true. Unfortunately, Loki (the god of mischief who could change sex at will – now that sounds like a great gig!) gate-crashed the party (doubtless without bottle ‘n’ bird) bringing the number of guests up to the unlucky number of 13. Loki then tricked Hodr (the blind god of winter and darkness) into bumping off Balder (the son of Odin and brother of Thor) with a mistletoe-tipped arrow – 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). In the series, the card representing Death is usually numbered 13.
Fast-forward to the 20th century and the British submarine HMS K13 sank during her sea trials in early 1917, sadly killing 32. After she was patched up and renamed K22, I’m afraid her luck didn’t change. She was involved in a variety of messy collisions in which a total of 103 unfortunate 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 13 April, an oxygen tank ruptured, forcing Apollo 13 to abort its mission and head for home, sharpish. For a while, it all looked somewhat dodgy for the crew. Happily for our tale, Tom Hanks saved the day and they all made it safely back to terra firma.
It should be noted that more than a few believe the entire Apollo 13 incident was staged as a psy-op, presumably to revive flagging public interest (i.e. taxpayer support) for the staggeringly expensive NASA 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. Clearly, the unlucky number 13 does quite well on its own, an’ don’t need no stinkin’ help from no stinkin’ Fridays.
However, getting back on topic with the dread 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 had begun to crop up with pleasing regularity. Then, in 1907, a very successful novel called Friday the 13th (written by Thomas W. Lawson) was published, telling 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 13 October 1989.
Of course, popular culture in the latter part of the 20th century, particularly through the 1980s, did much to amplify the superstition. 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 grisly horror, terminal bad luck and pneumatically nubile screaming teens in tight, and often wet, t-shirts.
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 US alone), there is now an official term for this malady: paraskevidekatriaphobia – fear of Friday the 13th.
Kerching! Yet another phobia that public sector workers can use as an excuse to skive, schools can use to claim additional funding and out of which, I’m sure, psychologists will do very well indeed.
Anyway, whatever the true origins of the superstition, I wish you all a trouble-free Friday the 13th with not the slightest hint of misfortune 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 2026
