Friday the 13, storm before Valentine?

Valentine on Saturday is much anticipated, a lot of people are having their holidays, and it gives us guys no excuses not to give our ladies some special treatment, which is always bad for a broke guy like me. Everywhere is crowded with couples, restaurants, cinemas, beaches, hotels and even parking lot. Every red, pink and white product become a best seller in the store. Every romance related product getting relatively more expensive then other week of the year.

However everytime Valentine falls on Saturday which happens on 2004, 2009, 2015, 2026, it will be preceded by the Black Friday (girls can't you just take shopping off your mind !?). Friday the 13, it is suppose to be a bad day or at least in human history a lot of bad things happened. Storm, sinking ship, war fires and even financial crisis. So much so there's a phobia for this very day, Friday the 13! Man, a human psychology can really determine the success or failure of an event.

Let's look at some interesting findings about Friday the 13....

Quoting from Wikipedia:

Friday the 13th is a superstition about a day of good or bad luck.

Phobia
The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskavedekatriaphobia, a word derived from the concatenation of the Greek words Paraskeví (Παρασκευή) (meaning Friday), and dekatreís (δεκατρείς) (meaning thirteen), attached to phobía (φοβία) (meaning fear). This is a specialized form of triskaidekaphobia, a simple phobia (fear) of the number thirteen, and is also known as friggatriskaidekaphobia. The term triskaidekaphobia was derived in 1911 and first appeared in a mainstream source in 1953.

History
One theory states that it is a modern amalgamation of two older superstitions: that thirteen is an unlucky number and that Friday is an unlucky day.

• In numerology, the number twelve is considered the number of completeness, as reflected in the twelve months of the year, twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve hours of the clock, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve Apostles of Jesus, twelve gods of Olympus, etc., whereas the number thirteen was considered irregular, transgressing this completeness. There is also a superstition, thought by some to derive from the Last Supper or a Norse myth, that having thirteen people seated at a table will result in the death of one of the diners.
  
  
• Friday has been considered an unlucky day at least since the 14th century's The Canterbury Tales, and many other professions have regarded Friday as an unlucky day to undertake journeys or begin new projects. Black Friday has been associated with stock market crashes and other disasters since the 1800s. It has also been suggested that Friday was the day that Jesus was crucified.

On the other hand, another theory by author Charles Panati, one of the leading authorities on the subject of "Origins" maintains that the superstition can be traced back to ancient myth:

The actual origin of the superstition, though, appears also to be a tale in Norse mythology. Friday is named for Frigga, the free-spirited goddess of love and fertility. When Norse and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity, Frigga was banished in shame to a mountaintop and labeled a witch. It was believed that every Friday, the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the devil - a gathering of thirteen - and plotted ill turns of fate for the coming week. For many centuries in Scandinavia, Friday was known as "Witches' Sabbath."


Another theory about the origin of the superstition traces the event to the arrest of the legendary Knights Templar. According to one expert:

The Knights Templar were a monastic military order founded in Jerusalem in 1118 C.E., whose mission was to protect Christian pilgrims during the Crusades. Over the next two centuries, the Knights Templar became extraordinarily powerful and wealthy. Threatened by that power and eager to acquire their wealth, King Philip secretly ordered the mass arrest of all the Knights Templar in France on Friday, October 13, 1307 - Friday the 13th.

Quoting from Chron.com

Dossey, founder of the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, N.C., estimates roughly 20 million Americans fall into that second category. They are so spooked by the date on the calendar they can’t go to work. Some don’t even get out of bed, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars in business not done.

That kind of scaredy-cat behavior is hardly new. Dossey says it dates back to Celtic and Druid mythology and wild tales told 3,500 years ago.

According to the myths, 12 gods were having a dinner party in Valhalla, their heaven, when the 13th god, evil Loki, sneaked in and arranged for a hit man to take out Balder, the god of joy, gladness and light.

Balder’s murder, which cast the world into darkness, accounted for the original fear of the number 13, Dossey says.

So now, a lot of myth surrounding this unlucky day, and at 10.46am when I type to this paragraph, nothing bad seems to happen yet. It has been the best day of the week (of course I hope my valentine date tomorrow would be an even better day), birds singing, flower blooming, soft sunlight, light rain. Fantatic day for sleeping, which means it will be a bad day for me if I actually fall asleep at work! Haha!

According to lauyeesm shit happens, today, yesterday, tomorrow and anyother day. So being supersticious ain't gonna help, since tomorrow is Valentinte just focus on your Valentine date, or if you don't have a date, go to some singles party, there are so much of them in town and I'll be going to one too (okay having a date is different from having a relationship)!