Unlucky number 13?

YOU’LL see this word cropping up over the next few days: ‘friggatriskadekaphobia’ — fear of Friday the 13th. Not to be confused with Friggaphobia — fear of Fridays or fear of ... er ... ahem ... swearing in Irish.

A December Friday 13th is different in character to other ones being mainly concerned with being afraid of what happens when you go into town to get some Christmas shopping done — namely getting clamped and other people behaving like assholes.

For some, friggatriskadekaphobia seeps into the rest of the week and can make you fear other days as well too. Exclusive to the Irish Examiner is the first ever coining of ‘lunaediesanonaphobia’ — which is a fear of Monday the 9th. It is characterised by a sense of foreboding about how much of a sense of a foreboding you’re going to have about Friday the 13th.

Our fixation with the number 13, like a lot of things, does not have a clear provenance. Judas is almost exclusively cited as being the original ‘13th’. He is sometimes mentioned as sitting in the 13th place at the last Supper but elsewhere in the Bible, other 13s are benign. For example the 13 attributes of Mercy describe the qualities with which the Hebrew God rules the world — e.g slow to anger, quick to forgive, compassionate, dead sound, does a lot of work in the local community, etc.

In Viking times, 13 was considered unlucky because the mischievous god Loki caused the death of Baldr and was the 13th person to arrive at a party shortly after. This is why right to this very day, a ‘low-key’ celebration never turns out that way and can get messy.

Many ancient traditions revolve around twelve. The 12 pubs of Christmas was an ancient tradition where people annoyed everyone else in the taverns with an exaggerated sense of group identity and wore outlandishly naff animal skins in an ironic way. Skins with actual mix of snow and dead reindeer were most popular.

The 13th pub was considered extremely unlucky as it was commonly agreed to be the one that was one too many.

Indeed, the chief problem with 13 is its proximity to twelve. Like a bold child placed next to a swot, 13 suffers by comparision. Twelve is a beautiful number — mathematicians love it and have accorded it many names: 12 is highly composite, superabundant, superfactorial. (I’m sure I don’t need to insult your intelligence by explaining what they are.) It’s even the ‘kissing number’ of three dimensions — meaning that if you have one sphere in the centre, you can only have 12 spheres arranged around it so that they all touch it.

By contrast, 13 is lumpy and uncoordinated. While twelve is getting the shift, 13 is sitting at the edge of the hall waiting for the Bryan Adams song to finish.

On the other hand, thirteen is a prime number. Prime is good. For anyone awake during the mortgage crisis, subprime was extremely unlucky. Thirteen is nothing to be afraid of.