Friday the 13- Fun or Fear

Today is Friday the 13th — a day when people expect strange things to happen. But why? Why does this particular combination of a day and a date carry so much cultural weight?

I did a little digging, and a few things stood out.

The most commonly cited origin involves the Last Supper. There were twelve apostles and Jesus — thirteen people at the table. Judas betrayed Jesus not long after, and somewhere along the way, having thirteen people at dinner became a bad omen. That one stuck with me, but not for the reason you might expect. Judas made a choice. A deeply personal, consequential choice. The number thirteen didn’t betray anyone — a person did. If I sit down to dinner tonight and there happen to be thirteen of us around the table, the meal isn’t cursed. The number is just a number.

That’s the thing about superstition — it tries to transfer the weight of human behavior onto something external. It lets us off the hook. If the circumstances are bad, maybe we don’t have to examine the choices.

The more interesting find in my research was a novel from 1907 called Friday the 13th by Thomas W. Lawson. It’s about a stockbroker who deliberately engineers a panic on Wall Street — using the superstition itself as a weapon. That one fascinated me enough to track down a free copy online. Highly recommend it if you’re curious.

And of course, there’s Camp Crystal Lake. Jason Voorhees. You know the rest.

The point is this: Friday the 13th has been shaped by folklore, literature, and a whole lot of Hollywood. But the day itself? It’s just a day. What happens on it is still mostly up to us.

So whatever you think or believe — Friday the 13th can be more fun than fear.

Where in your life have you caught yourself attributing an outcome to circumstance or superstition — when the real variable was actually a choice someone (including you) made?