We all have our superstitions, whether it’s picking up a penny if you see one lying around on the floor, or avoiding ladders and black cats entirely. Some people don’t like to step on more than two manhole covers in a row, and some people have to knock on wood if they talk about how nice the weather is. Whatever our own little superstitions and lucky items are, Gala Casino has some fascinating facts from a survey of Brits about those very things.
In their survey, Gala Casino discovered that a massive one third of all Brits own up to having a lucky number with half claiming they are based on the birthdays of family member or they previously had luck with their numbers. One in three people claimed the number 7 for themselves as their luckiest, maybe down to the fact that the number worked so well for 007 James Bond?
When it comes to superstitions and lucky charms, men are far more willing to believe than women. There are more men with lucky shoes than women, with one in ten men claim to own a pair of the footwear. One third of men in the UK believe that their pants are lucky - a surprisingly large statistic! Even more shocking, one in five men own their own lucky teddy bear, which is double the women who also claim to own one! Perhaps even more generally, one in ten men own a lucky charm, and more commonly, one in three have their own lucky number.
The biggest superstitions that we have in the United Kingdom as a whole, are walking under ladders, breaking or shattering mirrors and opening up umbrella’s indoors, with younger people in particular being the more superstitious generation. For the people who considered themselves ‘lucky’ (50% of men said they did), the top three lucky charms are four leaf clovers, finding pennies and knocking on wood. Nearly two thirds of all surveyed people use the same numbers when it comes to playing the lottery too – could you imagine if you didn’t one week and your numbers came up?
A lot of the above might seem familiar to you, these are all very traditional superstitions that perhaps we have all believed once upon a time. It should be noted though that perhaps from an outside perspective these could be considered strange, and other countries have superstitions that to us would seem downright bizarre.
In Iceland for example you should avoid knitting on your own doorstep, and sitting down on your porch for a quick ‘knit one purl one’ could wind up bringing about a long winter. In Vermont, you might see diagonal windows on buildings, these are known as witch-windows and are designed so that witches can’t fly their brooms in!
Do you have any of your own superstitions or lucky numbers?
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