Old wives tales and superstitions I've always been interested in. Even though most people know good and well that they are in fact just tales, I do find myself following some of these superstitions sometimes just for the fun of it. Superstitions, i think, were a way for those who couldn't explain different phenomenons or why things happened the way they did. They were also an easy way for parents to scare sense into misbehaving children. I believe that superstitions have lost their meaning due to the fact that advances in our knowledge of the world have been able to come up with rational reasons for why something might happen. Although some superstitions can't be explained if they involve such intangible and immeasurable things like luck.
Some superstitions i've grown up with are:
- An apple a day keeps the doctor away
- To break a mirror will bring you seven years bad luck
- To open an umbrella in the house is to bring bad luck
- If you blow out all of the candles on your birthday cake with the first breath you will get whatever you wish for
- Eating fish makes you smart
- Bread crusts makes your hair go curly
- Holding your breath past a graveyard will grant you a longer life.
What I can take from this exercise is that superstitions are symbols of past thinking being translated into a new world. Either a superstition looses meaning or it retains social value if it can answer what we still see as the unknown.
No comments:
Post a Comment