I’ve never heard of anything rabbit-related, but I sure do get a lot of ‘luck’ things from my Northern Ireland-born mother-in-law. Heather plants are lucky, green is lucky, if you buy a new purse, suitcase, or anything of that sort you have to put a coin in the bottom so no matter how poor you might be, you’ll never be out of money; if you get a new item of clothes somebody is supposed to say ‘health to wear’ (which I still don’t quite understand) and then there’s the whole clinking your glass against everybody else’s glass (I mean everybody, against everybody else - depending on the number of people at the table this can take a while), and toasts and speeches and so on…
I don’t understand the ‘luck’ thing. I wasn’t raised with any of it. I smile and nod, or mostly just nod, but I don’t get it. It’s more baffling than quaint. I may ask her about the ‘rabbit’ thing, though. She might have heard it before, even if she didn’t pass it on to my husband (who had never heard of it, I asked.) It all strikes me as a vestigial kind of …not witchcraft exactly, but crafting of ‘luck’ charms, and so on?
Interesting. In our family (from NZ but now in the UK) “White Rabbits” has got tied into the whole
“Pinch and a punch for the first of the month - and no returns White Rabbits”
The “white rabbits” appears as a modifier of “and no returns” to prevent a retalitory attack, of the
“a pinch and a kick for being so quick” variety.
It does not stop anyone, though, and the first of the month is usually a violent affair for the first few minutes, until everyone has done everyone else (but it has to be done before noon). These days, the kids usually forget that it is the first of the month anyway, so it gets ignored.
My wife and her twin sister say “White Rabbit” on the first of the month. My nieces do this, so that means that it’s probuble that their kids will do this too.
And no one knows why.
I’ve never heard of anything like this before. Happy Month White Rabbit sounds like one of those literal translations of the titles of Japanese anime (it’s what I thought this thread was about!). I can just see the “Hello Kitty” stores selling licensed Sanrio “Happy White Rabbits”.
I hate to break it to you but even though you like to think of all your little properly named states as having their own individual identities, to the rest of the world you are all just Americans.
I guess under your reasoning, North America and South America don’t have actual names or separate identities; they’re the same–you’re all just Americans to us.
Incidentally, the size of Australia is NOT analagous to that of North America. Australia covers less than a third of the land area of NA. A better analogy is Australia:United States, excluding Alaska.
In Peg Bracken’s “I Hate to Cook Almanac” she say that saying Bunny Bunny on the last day of the month and Rabit Rabit on the first day of the month will bring you luck all month long, according to her eight year old daughter.
Gilda Radner explained to her friend Alan Zweibel that when she was a child, she believed saying “Bunny Bunny” the first thing every morning would keep bad things away. She still did it the first thing on the first day of the month. Zweibel’s book on their relationship is a very good read. It’s called “Bunny Bunny.”
In my family (England) the tradition was to make the last thing you said before going to bed on the last day of any month “grey hares”, and the first thing you said the next morning “white rabbits”. Queue luck.
I have never in my life managed to perform this simple task.
