Superstition
In Italy, we have this saying: “anno bisesto, anno funesto”—leap year, sad year. And, hey! 2024 is a 366-day year! In January, though, the horoscope told me that the stars would have smiled at me, positioning Cancer as the second luckiest sign in its zodiacal ranking.
Quite a contradiction, isn’t it?
Brigitte Bardot in La Vérité by Cluzot, 1960
Predicting the Future
Both the belief that leap years bring bad luck and the tradition of stargazing to peek into the future are ancient and rooted in the clouds. In fact, the leap year originated in Rome when Julius Caesar, in order to align the calendar time with the astronomical year—which does not last exactly 365 days but 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 48 seconds—decided to add an extra day every four years. He added it right in February, the shortest month of the year, on the sixth day before the Kalends of March: 'bis sexto die'.
Incurious by Justin Dingwall via behance.net
But why should a year with an extra day bring bad luck? Actually, there is no logical reason to believe so, so much so that not all countries view leap years as having a negative connotation. For Romans, though, this spare day undermined normality, and the sense of control and predictability people felt in their lives. Moreover, February was the month dedicated to the Dead, so a mournful significance naturally slipped onto the unfortunate leap years.
During the 15th century, people believed that leap years were ominous for flocks and crops, and in Scotland, the saying persists today: “Leap year was never a good sheep year.”
Also, it is true that in 1792 France introduced the guillotine, in 1866 dynamite was invented, in 1912 the Titanic sank, in 1948 Gandhi was assassinated, in 1980 it was the turn of John Lennon, and, more recently, in 2020 the whole world locked down because of a catastrophic pandemic. But what does this list prove? Nothing, since catastrophes do not wait for leap years to occur. Not to mention that 2012 was a leap year, too. The Maya predicted the end of the world but, instead, on that day I was at school, looking out of the window waiting for something magical to happen. It didn’t.
Hulton Archive, Getty Images
Astrology, on the other hand, also looks at the movements of celestial bodies to find a complex of beliefs and traditions, but this year they were the opposite of what the leap year superstition stated. But how many trailers fool us into thinking that a film is super cool, only to find ourselves falling asleep after 12 minutes? Or how many films have we discarded, which, had we known beforehand, we would have watched, staying glued to the screen at the cost of holding our pee for 90 minutes?
For now, it is May, almost half the year is gone, and it is not as if the film of my life is going exactly as the horoscope-trailer painted it or the superstition states. The stars keep turning, and so does the luck. For everybody.
DIY Superstitions
What I find most amusing, though, is that, not believing in superstitions and in the horoscope, most of the time, I end up formulating beliefs myself. I began very early, when I was little and went to solfeggio with my Kinder egg filled with colored beads. I was convinced that if I fished out the blue and green ones, the musical dictation would go wrong, while if I fished out the pink and purple ones, it would go right.
Did it work? Unbelievably yes, or at least, that's what I had convinced myself of, and it often ended up that, after catching a green bead, I would make a mess. I then used to think that if I could walk inside the tiles without touching the lines I would be successful in everything I was about to do or think that by hitting the basket with the crumpled draft-paper, the next one I’d write would be the good one. That’s clearly nonsense, but somehow it motivated me.
Exposition of Christian Megert, via Pinterest
The point is that sometimes we need to hold on to something when we don’t know what will happen or we are scared about the consequences of something. And whether this is the horoscope, a popular saying or a self-made belief, the irrational part of the human being will arise.
To end with a funny note, I’d like to share with you two superstitions my grandma made up to prevent bad things from happening:
If you go to the cemetery, don’t go home straight afterwards. Go for a coffee, go shopping, go eat an ice cream. And only afterwards go back home.
If someone is ill, don’t dare to buy tissues. The health of the sick person will benefit from it.
Does that make sense? Not at all. But if believing or making up superstitions help us feel better, why not embrace them?
