An odd bit of news piqued my interest recently, though others of you may already be aware of it. Apparently, April 20 is much more unlucky than Friday 13 (which occurs from once to three times in any given year).
From my research, I learned that some believe Friday the 13th superstition relates to the Last Supper where Judas Iscariot, who was the betrayer of Jesus, was the 13th sitting at the table. No doubt there are other ideas you know about, taking the superstition further back in time.
Some of the April 20 events that helped make it an unlucky day over the centuries are as follows – in 1653 Oliver Cromwell dissolves the Rump Parliament, in 1657 Admiral Blake destroys the Spanish Silver Fleet under heavy fire in the battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and in 1871 the US Congress passed the Third Enforcement Act, also known as Ku Klux Klan Act.
And in 1914 a strike by Ludlow Colorado coal miners turned deadly when the military killed men, women and children indiscriminately, in 1999 there was the Columbia High School shooting, in 2010 the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and on April 20 1889 Adolf Hitler was born – which seemed to underline the bad omens for this date.
There are plenty of other events if one looks closely, scoring negatives as well as positives on any given day.
But Italy believes that Friday 13 is a lucky day, so why not change our thinking about April 20, and collectively make it a positive day, believing that we are over the curve of this pandemic, infections and deaths are reducing, the front line workers get their PPE at last, the government ramps up testing and tracing, and looks after all the people who are keeping our individual world going – collecting the trash, getting post to our houses, keeping the shops open for food and transporting goods on the road. So many positives in this traumatic time, positive gestures for and in the community.
More worrying than April 20 is post Covid-19, what will that be like? Will this government continue their benevolent behaviour towards workers and small businesses, financially raise pay for the nurses, or eventually return to its conservative policies?
We must not let that happen, because after this trauma there is an opportunity to create a more egalitarian, better society. This will mean concentrating on the social needs, the climate issues which presently have been pushed aside, and not insist, as seems the case, that Brexit has to be done by December, a problem that can wait. We are all in this together, dealing with Covid-19. Afterwards, each country will have to fight to get back to some sort of social and economic health.
Image Credits: Heidi Foster , Kevin McCarthy , Rye Mutual Aid .