I’ve lived in Canada for at least twice my own natural lifespan and I’ve never heard of spilling salt being bad luck - I do it all the time on my driveway! What part of Canada holds this superb stition?
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SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 3 days agoTIL spilling salt isn’t considered bad luck in the US. As you can see in the wiki you linked it’s a European (not just Eastern European) superstition, along with being a bad omen in many religions in the world.
I’m from Canada and it’s considered bad luck here, though generally not taken all that seriously.
Can I ask what part of the US are that you’ve never heard of spilling salt to be bad luck? Also why would you just dump it on the ground?
SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
I’ve heard of spilling salt as being a bad thing, but tbh I don’t think anyone where I live believes in them.
except for my grandma who would SWEAR by putting lima beans in her pocket on new years day
Jackcooper@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I heard you just throw it over your shoulder if you do
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
I’ve had a Jewish friend in the US tell me that. Although I honestly have no idea if it’s linked to Jessie’s culture or not.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I’m originally from the southeastern U.S., so…yeah…grew up pretty ignorant. Full-stop. We weren’t superstitious (unless you count faaar-right religious fundamentalism, young-earth creationism, Jack T. Chick, grown men sprinting laps and hollerin’ “in the spirit,” occasionally maybe waving a gun on stage as a sermon illustration, etc…).
Anyway, from my perspective, the greeting/joke was over. We got in the car. Now I find myself with a little bowl of salt in the car. Can’t exactly put it in the cupholder. It was like a tablespoon or two I poured from the container in my kitchen. It was salt. It came from somewhere down there in the earth, it’s not hurting anything. I dumped it. It didn’t even occur to me that someone could be offended. I would never do it, because why would I, but it’s like if I opened a little paper salt packet from McDonald’s a little too forcefully and it spilled and someone was like, “YOU FUCKING MOTHERFUCKER, HOW DARE YOU, DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE UNLEASHED.”
As an aside, once we were romantically involved a little while later, being the romantic that I sometimes ashamedly am, I one day picked some flowers for her on my very nature-y walk home from work. Tiger lillies. The next day, I came home and the whole house smelled like lillies, the windows were open, it was like a movie scene. Then she came up to me bleary-eyed and swollen faced and had to explain that lillies happened to be THE thing she was most-allergic to.
One of these days, I’ll figure out what went wrong in that relationship.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I’m convinced the superstition is a misunderstanding over time of things that were, on their own, bad luck. Salt used to be expensive, so spilling some was bad luck because you would have rather kept it all for use instead of wasting it.
Mirrors would have also been expensive, especially when they needed to be transported before the time of smooth suspensions. The whole 7 years thing could be from it taking around 7 years for one particular broken mirror to be replaced.
Or the ones that invite accidents, like walking under a ladder (which usually implies someone is working at the top and might drop something, so odds of death are a bit higher under ladders). Or opening an umbrella indoors, where things are more crowded and you might injure someone or break something.
Though the black cat one is probably just racism.
Anyways, I bet that’s where they started and then humans being kinda (or very, depending on the circumstances) stupid and liking jumping on bandwagons they don’t always understand to fit in, left us with some people thinking those things cause ghosts to haunt you or whatever dumb shit superstitious people think happens.
Though I do think it is a bit wasteful to just dump salt out on the ground.