Superstition: Friday the 13th is losing cultural significance

According to researchers, the superstition of Friday the 13th tragedy has lost much of its importance in Germany. What remains of the supposed unlucky day?

Bad luck, grief, misfortune – Friday the 13th usually has unpleasant associations. Are – or rather were? For cultural scientists, this superstition, which today is correctly called popular belief, is increasingly being forgotten in the minds of Germans. The reason for this could be a mixture of secularization, digitization and a present that holds very real horrors in store, from pandemics to war in Europe. A phobia, i.e. a pathological fear only of Friday the 13th, has never existed as an independent clinical picture anyway.

Gunther Hirschfelder, Professor of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Regensburg, has been researching phenomena such as Friday the 13th for decades. In 2000, his students conducted in-depth interviews in the Rhineland. After all, around a third of the randomly selected respondents openly admitted that this day was important to them.

The meaning of happiness and unhappiness has changed

Hirschfelder considers a similar result to be unlikely today. “We don’t negotiate happiness and unhappiness like that anymore,” he says. Not as many people believed in higher powers as they used to. “Happiness and unhappiness for a lot of people today somehow means being healthy or not being wiped out on dating apps like Parship and Tinder,” adds the scientist.

“Friday the 13th made a living from the fact that we went into the office in the leisurely days of the old Federal Republic or in the GDR and said that we had hit someone’s bumper with an iced-up car window,” says Hirschfelder. This was intended to initiate communication. “Similar to a joke culture.”

In the digital world, however, where fewer people meet in person in offices, such low-threshold communication has almost become obsolete. You can’t post either. “And a dropped soda bottle is not enough for a Facebook scandal,” says Hirschfelder.

Up to five times more sick leave

Is there a phenomenon where people stay in bed and call in sick out of sheer fear of Friday the 13th? Ask the commercial health insurance company (KKH). Result from before: In the years 2006 to 2008 there were three to five times more sick leave than on other Fridays.

And today? The KKH, with around 1.6 million insured persons, scanned their data from the years 2019 to 2022 using a different method. The statistical picture on the supposed day of the accident is ambivalent. In the first Corona year 2020, the two Fridays that fell on a 13th occupied a conspicuous top spot among all Fridays of that year in terms of the number of sick leave reports. In the years 2021 and 2022, in which a Friday fell on the 13th of each month, they were quite far behind with places 29 and 27. In 2019 – with two 13-day Fridays – there was 9th place. However, phobias as a reason for sick leave were rare in all years.

The fear has a name: paraskavedekatriaphobia

There is a tongue twister that describes the fear of Friday the 13th based on the Greek: paraskavedekatriaphobia. In the international classification system, however, this is not a recognized mental illness, explains Christina Jochim, deputy federal chair of the German Psychotherapists Association in Berlin. “It doesn’t exist like that.”

For science, phobias are symptom pictures that are based on verified data. “For example, phobias can trigger panic attacks when you get close to such a situation. So you see certain animals like spiders or dogs. When it comes to flying or going to the dentist,” adds Jochim.

Friday the 13th falls more into the magical thinking category. “Because this fear does not refer to a specific situation, it is anticipatory,” says the psychotherapist. “A kind of fear of fear.” That alone is very rare. “If so, then it usually arises in a context with a generalized anxiety disorder.” From her point of view, however, it is not a good idea to stay in bed on the supposed day of bad luck. “What all anxiety disorders have in common is that avoidance leads to more anxiety,” she says.

That is the basis of the superstition

According to Jochim, today the day plays a smaller role in the general consciousness than it used to. “When the fear of Friday the 13th is less discussed, there is less reason to be afraid.”

For cultural scientists Hirschfelder, popular belief around Friday the 13th is surprisingly young in Germany. It is true that neither Fridays nor the number 13 have a good reputation in Christian culture: Jesus was crucified on Good Friday and the 13 went beyond the familiar system of twelve apostles, twelve hours or twelve months. But the combination of both as an unlucky day has only been documented for Hirschfelder since the 1950s – and probably a cultural import from the USA. Because there some authors wanted to have discovered a connection with stock market crashes earlier.

“There is a great risk that this day will continue to lose importance,” speculates Hirschfelder. “Especially in what feels like a catastrophe, it has little impact.” However, the field of superstition or popular belief is probably not generally declining. “Today it just no longer manifests itself in a bourgeois center.” It continues to play a role in individual social contexts. “In the migrant milieu, this has not yet been researched at all.”

dpa

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