Going to school my friends would say: ‘don’t step on a crack or you will break your mother’s back,’ ‘what do you think you are doing walking underneath the ladder, are you crazy,’ ‘throw salt over your left shoulder for luck, hah…hah,’ (Rachel Ray does this a lot on her show)…etc.

If listening to those superstitions weren’t enough, growing up in the Asian culture I would hear even more: ‘do not let a pregnant woman be the first person you see on New Years, you will have a years worth of misfortune,’ ‘if you build a house don’t let the main staircase face the front door, all your money will flow away from you,’ ‘red is a lucky wedding color, white is a very bad color‘ ‘being born on August 8th, 2008 will bring you a lifetime of luck’…. Ok, so the last one I made up, but I know that if someone in my family had someone born on this day, he or she will be the talk of the town.

I consider myself a selective-don’t-believe-in-all-but-plays-along-superstitious person. Every once in a while I will catch myself throwing salt over my shoulder or making sure I don’t see a pregnant woman on New Years. I think some of the superstitions are hilarious but at the same time I am fascinated with their origins. When I ask my mom or any of my aunts and uncles how a superstition came to be, the explanations are interesting to say the least.

So here is what I found on why today’s date and the number 8 is so special or lucky.  In Chinese the word for ‘eight’ sounds similar with the word ‘prosper’ and  therefore is considered the luckiest of the numbers (2, 3, 6 and 9 are also lucky, but they don’t have cool similar sounding words).   The number 4 is considered a bad number because it sounds similar to the word ‘death’, not a good thing to be throwing around.  That is why you might hear  that the 4th and 14th floors are sometimes skipped in China, similar to western culture where skipping the 13th floor is known.  Anyhow, the more 8′s you see the better, that is main the reason why China wanted to host the Olympics today, why so many people are trying to get married and why some people are inducing themselves into labor to have a baby today,…it is  considered a really lucky day.  Superstitious or not, today is not like every other day  People might think it is cool to  have some type of memory relating to today’s date.  I had a friend last year get married on 07.07.07 and I am sure someone out there right now is getting proposed to or getting married and you will see next year, on 09.09.09, people doing the same thing.  Today, I will celebrate by buying 8 lottery tickets for fun.  WISH ME LUCK!

So if you hear a superstition from someone, take it with a grain of salt and throw it over your shoulder (hah, get it?! Lame joke, I know). You don’t have to believe in it, but try to understand where it comes from and you will appreciate the superstition more. Take care.

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