Do you really want that Friday feeling? Tradition says it was the day Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden, Noah’s flood started and Christ was crucified

Hurrah, it’s Friday. The end of the working week, reward for some — Noël Coward famously declared ‘if you must have motivation think of your paycheck on Friday’ — and weekend pleasures are imminent. Steady on. Friday has a reputation. Many bad things are supposed to have occurred on this day.

Tradition quotes Friday as the day when Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden, Noah’s flood started, the Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem fell and Christ was crucified. W. H. Auden was of the opinion that ‘Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot — the reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith’. Geoffrey Chaucer recorded in 'The Nun’s Priest’s Tale' in The Canterbury Tales that ‘on a Friday fell all this mischance’, financial crashes have happened on this day — the first in England in December, 1745 — and Friday used to be called Hangman’s Day because it was the usual day for executions.

It was also a bad day for setting sail. Crews would miss their weekend ashore and ill fortune would attend the voyage. An oft-repeated tale told is that of HMS Friday, a brig whose keel was laid that very day. She set sail on a Friday under the command of Capt Friday and disappeared forever. It’s a myth, according to the Royal Navy Museum, but the superstition it illustrates persists. Other old Friday fears cite not starting a new job, not changing the bed linen, not cutting your fingernails and misplacing your cutlery.

‘Then to contribute to my loss My knife and fork were laid across On Friday, too! The day I dread; Would I were safe at home in bed!’ wrote John Gay in Fables (1727).

However, there is a good side to Friday. The notion of attributing certain qualities to those born on particular days of the week dates back to the early 16th century and Thomas Nashe’s line suggesting ‘Friday’s child is loving and giving’ was recorded in Bray’s Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire (1836).

Appropriately, not one of the murderous tyrants of recent history, from Stalin and Hitler to Ceaucescu and Assad, was born on a Friday, but Donald Trump was, so make of it what you will. The day has meant something to several writers, too. James Joyce wrote that ‘every Friday buries a Thursday’, whereas Sylvia Plath rehabilitated herself by staying up late on a Friday night and Terry Pratchett declared that ‘the evil get to go home early on Fridays’.

Nonetheless, things get chancy when Friday combines with the 13th of the month, which happens at least once a year and occasionally two or three times. Fear of the number 13 on its own is so deep-rooted — it’s called triskaidekaphobia — that many hotels and office buildings don’t have a 13th floor or a Room 13 and airline seat rows rank straight from 12 to 14. The notion that 13 at table invites trouble (avoided by seating a teddy bear as a guest) is rooted in Norse folklore. A dozen gods were holding a banquet in Valhalla when the disruptive god Loki gatecrashed the event and tricked the blind god Hoor into fatally striking his brother Baldur, god of light, with a lance of mistle-toe, the only plant that could harm him. Darkness descended and in northern European cultures the number 13 was forever linked with ill fortune.

However, Friday the 13th can also be considered special. Fear of it was dubbed paraskevidekatriaphobia by a US stress-management specialist Dr Don Dossey, who estimated that one in 16 Americans suffer it. His cure? Learn how to pronounce it. A UK hotel survey suggests that one in three Britons avoid travel, reschedule appointments, delay important purchases and keep away from mirrors and ladders when the potent date looms, with two-thirds reporting bad luck on previous occasions and admitting to throwing salt over their shoulders, greeting magpies or hoping to encounter black cats in order to divert disaster.

Every week, we are reminded that Norse mythology still haunts us. Friday is named after Frigga, goddess of fertility and motherhood, and mother of the unfortunate Baldur. An alternative word for fear of Friday the 13th? Friggatriskaidekaphobia. Now there’s something to be frightened of.

This feature originally appeared in the October 29 2025, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.