The Twelve Days of Christmas and Other Superstitions

Don't forget that tomorrow is January 6th and according to Christmas superstition, if you don't get all your decorations down by midnight tomorrow, you may experience a year of bad luck. Now I wouldn't be at all surprised if quite a few Glastonbury folk get a little bit twitchy about the odd superstition, so may want to heed this reminder.

I hoiked all our household decorations down a couple of days ago but just to get ready to do a spot of decorating. Nonetheless, I would be filled with a sense of impending doom should I find a random piece of tinsel about the place on the morning of the 7th.

I don't know many people who don't abide by some kind of superstitious 'discipline' in order to preserve good luck; not walking under ladders (personally, it's scaffolding that freaks me out, all that potential for falling planks / buckets / poles / tools / builders), not putting a pair of new shoes on a table, throwing spilled salt over your shoulder, the black cat superstition (though I get confused as I always thought it was good luck for a black cat to cross your path but someone else said it was bad luck. It is apparently down to culture and in the UK and Ireland it is meant to symbolise good luck). I'm certain that many local Glastonbury folk have their superstitions covered by way of some kind of protective personal charm over all shoes, cats, ladders etc or have a ready made blend of herbs and resins to burn to ward off those pesky bad luck spirits etc etc. I, on the other hand, do not, and so have to counter the act of breaking a superstition (such as shattering a mirror, putting my shoes on the table) with a choice swear word.

We were moving some books off of shelves recently, and in one book that my partner had bought from a Glastonbury charity shop but hadn't yet read, a piece of pressed heather fell out. I was immediately suspicious of it - although it is meant to signify good luck, I started getting a bit worried that as I wasn't the person to acquire the 'lucky' heather, maybe it would be really unlucky! So I binned it, and then started getting really worried that I may have been wrong about the 'unlucky' heather, and that I had actually thrown away 'lucky' heather and so was bringing myself bad luck. You figure all that out. It most probably just means that I am an idiot.

Do you follow any superstitions? Is there some fanciful behaviour you are bound to undertake to preserve good luck, such as saluting a magpie? Let us know!

Photo courtesy of Bernd Meiseberg