In a post-divorce daze, you might back have looked and thought, ” It would’ve worked out, it had been simply the timing that has been all wrong.
” had been both you and your ex hitched within a jump 12 months? You might have already been onto one thing.
Greek and Ukrainian folklore shows that partners that marry during a jump have bad luck year.
Leap years had been devised by Julius Caesar within the century that is first so that you can sync the calendar because of the periods. Today Pope Gregory XIII later perfected the system in 1582, forming the Gregorian calendar used. The revised calendar was accompanied by a brand new set of superstitions, Neni Panourgia, an associate professor at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University, told The Huffington Post for the Greek and Romans.
“Both had superstitions regarding anything that is starting on a jump 12 months. It had been not only engaged and getting married, but baptizing a young child, getting into any kind of contractual relationship, selling, beginning a journey as well as a job that is new” stated Panourgia, whoever 1995 guide, “Fragments of Death, Fables of Identity: An Athenian Anthropography,” details Greek jump 12 months superstitions.
The aspect that is only of Greek superstition that still stays today, stated Panourgia, may be the belief that leap year marriages and engagements are trouble that will just result in 2 kinds of individual catastrophes: “The implication being either a divorce proceedings or among the partner’s death.”
But does the superstition hold any fat for contemporary Greeks?
Panourgia acknowledges casual, non-scientific magazine polls that recommend continuing belief, however in the lack of research, she stays skeptical.
“People will concur with lots of things they recognize to be element of folklore, but that doesn’t indicate that when push comes to shove — if choices on wedding should be taken — they will not be taken by partners.”
Nevertheless, each time a divorce or separation occurs, the jump 12 months produces a culprit that is good “People could possibly state one thing moved wrong or might get wrong exactly as it’s a jump year,” Panourgia stated.
Leap is considered equally unlucky for marriage in Ukraine, where every day of the year has an assigned saint day. Feb. 29 takes place to boast a specially bad saint known as Cassian, stated Natalie Kononenko, a teacher and Kule seat of Ukrainian Ethnography in the University of Alberta.
In accordance with Kononenko, legend has it that Cassian declined to aid a peasant whoever cart was stuck when you look at the mud, and St. Nicholas stumbled on his help rather, prompting Jesus to grant St. Nicholas two saint’s times per 12 months, while restricting Cassian to a measly one every four years. The professor explained in an e-mail to The Huffington Post since then, a vengeful Cassian has brought sickness to people and cattle with a single gaze. It really is small shock, then, that after Feb. 29 rolls around, Ukrainians are urged to remain indoors, keep animals inside and . refrain from marrying?
As Kononenko russian brides at russianbridesfinder.com stated, “no body in the or her right head would get hitched on February 29 considering the belief.”