This is sort of a General Question within a IMHO-type one:
I was talking to my German friend the other day, and I remembered when he was an exchange student here in the States. He and another German guy were mock-horrified when someone lit a cigarette from a lit candle. They explained that they didn’t really “believe” in the superstition, but that supposedly, every time you light a smoke from a candle, a sailor dies.
Does anyone know the origin of this? (I know, most superstitions, American, German, and all others, are really silly and baseless in reality, but I had never heard this one before.)
I remember finding it interesting at the time because (apparently) superstitions are cultural; what’s considered “unlucky” in one country is not necessarily the same in another.
Also, what other “foreign” superstitions have you found strange when encountering them as an adult for the first time?
And finally, are there any superstitions that transcend culture? Is there anything that’s considered bad luck in all countries? The number 13? Black cats? Breaking mirrors?
(By the way, I don’t buy into any superstitions; I just find the topic interesting.)
I recalled hearing this one, but not necessarily as a German superstition. When I googled it I got several hits from English sites, so my presumption is that this is not just a German thing. There may have even be some discussion on this here at one point.
I never heard that one, but it may be a variation on the “three lights on a match” superstition. That one was based on lighting up a target long enough for a sniper to take aim. WW one?
In Germany it is considered bad luck to let tourists talk about the war.
You can be in Berchtesgaden, which Hitler made home, and they will pretend not to have realized that.
I’ve never heard that one either. However, I thought it was odd that in France they make a HUGE deal of never EVER giving someone Lilies. Like, if you go to dinner at someone’s house you bring a gift, but never lilies. I think they have something to do with death. I dunno if that’s a superstition, or a courtesy. Any Frenchmen/women ever heard of this?
mandielise: Lilies are often associated with death, yes, and to bring them to someone alive sends a bad message. Not quite like a horse head in bed, but unpleasant.
Anyway, some American regional superstitions are odd as well. For example, eating chokecherries and milk is, in Montana, supposed to be toxic. In Louisiana, the combination to avoid is fish and milk. Are there any other dietary restriction superstitions around?
I don’t know about Germans, but as far as I know, most of my mother’s superstitions are Italian. A wild bird in the house is a harbinger of death, putting shoes on the table is bad luck, ditto hats on the bed… I’m sure there are others I can’t think of right now. As far as food superstitions go, Italians eat herring on New Year’s Eve, and Southern Americans eat black eyed peas, no?
And of course the “hat on the bed” one was featured prominently in the film drugstore cowboy. They also had an aversion to the mention of dogs, but I think that one was specific to the character’s situation;)
I knew a Russian guy once who had some strange superstitions. One was about not making gestures on his person that mimicked other people’s bodily injuries. Sometimes I’d forget that and say something like, “She got cut right there,” and gesture across his arm only to have him freak out and yell at me.
He had this other wierd one that was kind of an urban legend type of thing. I was in hurry to make pasta one day and I filled a pan with hot water (so it would heat up faster, obviously). He got very excited and made me pour it out, explaining that there were chemicals put in the water (but only the hot water) to make it retain heat longer, and so you should never ingest hot water out of the tap. Or something like that.
I’m sure he had others, but I can’t recall any more at the moment. And he wasn’t uneducated, either- he had a couple of college degrees in serious scientific fields.
Actually, Fairblue, hot water is chemically worse for you than cold. Chemicals aren’t added to hot water, but hot water will leach minerals from the pipes it travels through. My husband loses his marbles about this on a regular basis, because I do it all the time.
Well, my fiancee, who is from Romania, is convinced that if you eat too many eggs, you’ll die from some mysterious poison… I went through a boiled-egg binge a little while back, partly because I liked to watch him freak when he found out I’d eaten more than 2 eggs at once
Well, that’s the first rule of toxology: the dosage makes the poison. Anything is harmless in small enough quantities (granted, this may be REALLY small for some), and anything is poisonous if you eat enough of it. However, it would be considerably more than three eggs to poison someone - you might be able to kill yourself with several hundred at once, though.
One superstition I’ve seen that is either Southern or African - American (I’m not sure which) is that if you are sweeping or mopping a floor and the broom or mop touches someone’s foot, that person will go to jail.
I follow a couple of superstitions that other people think are strange – I’m not sure quite where I got them from.
One is that when I put shoes on the floor, I never put the right one on the right and the left one on the left, like they’d be if I were wearing them. I always put them the other way around. The superstition is something about them walking away with your luck, As I recall.
The other is that if I’m lying on my back, I always cross my legs or raise my arms or something – because it’s bad luck to lie like a corpse in a coffin. Even when I roll onto my back in my sleep, I wake up to find one ankle over the other.
This from someone who doesn’t care about the number thirteen, or breaking mirrors, or crossing under ladders. Go figure.
