Women cannot preserve food by canning while on their monthly. There is a scientific explanation. A chemical is released during menstruation and when you run your finger around the rim, will cause the lid to not seal.
I'm not a superstitious person but I remember an episode of M*A*S*H where bad luck and superstition was the focus of the show and at one point Radar was about to hang up a horseshoe above a door for luck and Colonel Potter told him not to hang it with the ends pointing down ∩ because if you do then all the luck will run out, so it needs to be hung with the "arms" pointing up U to catch all the luck.
On New Year's Eve, put money outside your door. Any denomination will do. Then after midnight, You bring the money back in. You will have a prosperous New Year. It hasn't worked for me yet, but I've never lost a large sum of money so I still do it. There are many others, but I was never given the reason for them. It's bad luck to open an umbrella inside the house. Never put a hat on a bed. It's also bad luck to bring your old broom when moving to a new home. If you give a sharp gift to someone (scissors, knives, etc.) you must give a coin in the package, otherwise you sever the relationship. You make sure your head and feet are covered and dry is as important as washing your hands to ward off illness.
My Grandma was Sicilian my Grandfather was from Naples . And from them I learned you can catch a cold in every part of your body . Don't sit in a draft . And the evil eye was a real thing to them.
If you spill your entire bottle of olive oil in North America, you are already very unlucky because the prices of good olive oil are ridiculous expensive now. Your wallet will cry for days, LOL.
Growing up as a second generation Italian-American listening to Ava talk about the different superstitions brought back so many of my childhood memories. I carried many of these superstitions into my marriage and brought my kids up with them. My hubby who is Irish tends to still shake his head at some of them. (Even after 38 years of marriage) Thanks to this video I have clearly been validated! 🎉Thanks Ava😁 Love watching you two. Love from NC. ❤
There's at least one book about superstitions and omens of the Appalachians and Ozarks. About every paragraph has some disaster that will occur if you walk through a gate wrong, or sweep wrong. AND it's a couple of hundred pages. It's a wonder anything gets done. Also explains (besides the moonshine business) why strangers are not welcome. They break the rules constantly. Also their intimate territory starts at the property line and it's common in some areas to "hollar" from the street by the gate rather than go up to the front door. Another faux pas strangers do that irritate. You have to enter the gate properly too or disaster.... Probably a lot is no longer even thought about but at one time it was as good as the law.
My late Jamaican grandmother always reminded me that walking around in bare feet would make me sick. Kingston, Jamaica in December never drops below 26°C!!
Walking barefoot can lead to stepping on insects, small animals, or just debris that could bite, sting, or pierce the skin causing poisoning or infection. And infection in a world without effective disinfectants and antibiotics was a bad client. In Greek myth, Philoctetes (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philoctetes) was abandoned on an island to die by his mates because of a small infected wound to his foot.
@@alicetwain there’s a parasite that can enter through your heel. I can’t remember what country it happens in mostly, but it’s usually when people are walking barefoot on the beach.
3:19 Quel sacchettino rosso non l’ho mai visto dalle mie parti (e non sono nato mica ieri !). Per quanto riguarda le superstizioni, c’è da tener presente che varie superstizioni vanno molto in base alla zona, non sono cose che possiamo generalizzare per tutta l’Italia. Giusto per fare un esempio, per queste cose tra Napoli e Milano o Bolzano c’è una grandissima differenza ! Ci sono cose raccontate in questo video che in molte zone d’Italia non sanno nemmeno cosa siano. Tra l’altro certe usanze, anche nella stessa zona, possono esserci in una famiglia e non in un’altra. Qui a volte spesso si parla di esperienze personali, di usanze in un determinato paesino, in qualche famiglia, e gli americani all’ascolto immaginano magari che tutta l’Italia e tutti gli italiani pensino ed agiscano allo stesso modo (e questo ovviamente per quanto riguarda varie cose, non solo per questo tema). Le esperienze di cui parla qui Harper, fatte nel paesino di Eva, molto probabilmente non le avrebbe fatte in una città del Nord Italia.
@@ally7329 Allora…. a parte il fatto che il titolo di questo video parla di “superstizioni italiane”, quindi già si generalizza nel titolo del video. Ma ti posso assicurare che alcune cose di cui parla Eva qui in questo video, dalle mie parti (ed anch’io provengo dal sud Italia !) non le ho mai sentite ! Ed io, come dicevo sopra, non sono nato ieri.
Infatti non solo valgono per praticamente tutto il Sud Italia (non certo solo Dasà o la Calabria, ma anche per Campania, Puglia e Sicilia, nel mio caso specifico, ma sicuramente altri aggiungeranno le loro località!), ma addirittura sono perlopiù validi anche x gli altri paesi del 'Sud-Europa', leggasi Spagna, Portogallo, Grecia, ecc.ecc...
@@SeVanSar-vz2ym. Leggi un po’ cosa ho risposto a “ally7329”. Ed io provengo da una zona, da un paesino, nel sud della Campania, quasi vicino alla Calabria.
In una città del Nord come Venezia, passare fra le due colonne in piazza S. Marco è qualcosa che un veneziano non farà mai. Ogni luogo ha le sue tradizioni, ma non si può negare che siamo un popolo superstizioso, in generale.
Now in my 80’s, I grew up in a Hungarian/Romanian household. We have all those Italian superstitions plus loads more. But the one that my husband always laughed about was, if you get a wort, you loosely tie a thread around it, remove the looped thread, bury it beneath the ground where the water runs off the roof, when the string rots your wort will be gone. I saw my mother, great grandmother do this many times for friends and family. Power of positive thinking, if you believe that the superstition is true, than unexplained things can happen. Loved this episode.
In Russia, there is a superstition that a knife can't be gifted. Only bought. So if you want to gift a knife to someone, you need accept a coin from the person receiving the knife. Russians are also particular about wet hair outside. Also, one is not supposed to sit on a stone outside (for some reason sitting on the stone is considered a risk to have kidney infection).
Yes...regarding knives, the same is true in italy...but also needles or pins or sharp objects in general. You have to pay them, symbolicaly but pay them. 😉
@@gabrielesantucci6189 In France you cannot offer someone a handkercief as a gift. You need to ask the receiver for a small coin. Otherwise you are provoking an occasion for tears.
The exchange of a coin for a knife is also an English superstition. My mother insisted that I give my aunt some coins for knives given to me as a wedding present.
I remember watching a video where someone (Kim Jong Il?) gave Vladimir Putin a sword as a gift on a state occasion. Putin looked startled and rummaged through his pockets to get some coins to give him. It was a very funny video!
This was so much fun to watch... I am from a Greek background and the wet hair, wind etc., ones are very similar.... we also have a version of the Malocchio... we call it the 'mati or matee'... which basically means the eye. You may have seen jewellery or decorations of a blue circle with a smaller white circle with a black dot in the center... this is an amulet against the evil eye. In the Greek tradition, you can be afflicted by the evil eye both for bad thoughts towards you... this is usually intentional... as well as praise, this is usually unintentional and if the person doing it catches themselves praising you, they will then try and remedy the situation by pretending to 'spit'... you may have seen this if you saw the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding... we usually say something like 'ptew ptew'... this is the idea of reversing the praise. Now, in my family, my mom was the 'strega' but we don't have a name for the person doing this. She 'stole' the prayer from her aunt who was the 'strega' of the village because my mom spent a lot of time with this aunt as a young girl, and as Eva says, the 'strega' mumbles the prayer under their breath... well, my mom's aunt was hard of hearing so her mumble was louder than most... and since she was often called on to get rid of the mati, my mom learned it from hearing it so often. My mom's mom, my yiayia also was a 'strega' and another way to share this is by teaching it to a young person of the opposite sex. She taught me when I was about 12. You can also learn it by being given the prayer on Thursday before Good Friday.... the latter being the weakest form, the senior to junior the standard version and the 'stolen' version the strongest form. When performing the prayer, and the 'strega' starts yawning enough to make the eyes water, that denotes the person has been zapped with the mati. The more intense the yawning/crying eyes, the stronger the hex. And woe is you if you fall asleep with the mati before you can get rid of it.
I Abruzzo i heard much made of "La Voglia". Basically if a pregnant woman sees some food that she then craves but is denied it, wherever she touches herself the baby will have a birthmark that resembles the denied food. So they try to satisfy all cravings and if they cannot the women will touch themselves somewhere that will not be seen and cause obvious disfiguration to her baby.
"Always hairing ...", how sweet ! 😂 It is, too, I 'my sure it' s related to her consumption of loads of healthy dairy, proper mineral and hormone intake...
Red Ribbon, Evil eye! "Molocchio", Italian horn, the Cimuruta, "Rhue branch amulet'", Mano Corno, "Horned hand", Figa, Quadrofoglio "four-leaf clover", a new broom, And more.
My boss at one of my first jobs is Italian and warned us about the maloykies and said the counter spell to cure the maloykies was to always wear red underwear. I don't know about that, but I do know she made the best Italian eggplant parmigiana in this world.
When I was an alter boy, after the Sunday service, we would wash the crumbs from the Communion wafer tray and the drops in the wine chalice in a special sink with a drain that was not connected to the public waste water system, but had its own underground drain field entirely on sanctified, Church grounds.
@@johnburk6564 Yeah, considering that, in Catholic theology, the bread and wine are literally transformed into God, it would be sacrilegious to pour God down the drain and into the sewer!
I am a Eucharistic minister and we rinse the chalice and ciborium in one side of the sink, especially designed for consecrated bread and wine, the precious body and blood of Christ.
In Tibetan Buddhism, after food and flowers are offered on the shrine to the Buddhas during a ceremony, they are never thrown in the trash, but brought outside and placed in a clean, high place. It is believed the spirits and ghosts can receive those offering leftovers and that it benefits them.
My Mom wasn't Italian, but she ALWAYS said, "Donna, don't you dare go outside with wet hair" (this was in Texas.. where the daily temperatures could easily go over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer). It is a fact... We lose a lot of heat through our head. I immediately identified with that FACT!!
Are these superstitions common in all of Italy or just in southern Italy? Calabria? Ancestors several thousand years ago came from the Aegean Islands. Did they bring these superstitions and customs with them? Bread? A sacred item in the Church, it represents the body of Christ. In the Orthodox Church bread is passed out to the people after the liturgy. It is given to those who had not prepared themselves to receive the sacrament of communion but if they have not eaten before the liturgy they may partake of it before eating after church otherwise it should be eaten the very next morning before having Drank or eaten anything. It’s interesting how these variations of superstition are shared by people of the eastern Mediterranean region. We have the same thing with the Evil Eye commonly called Tō Mati or Kakō Mati. Same as to how you get it and how it’s cured.
The bare feet thing is in Greece and Turkey as well. We had a cleaning lady in Turkey and she was just sure I was going to get sick because I walked around the house barefooted. I didn’t, for a year or so. Later there was a cold going around that everybody got, including her, but when she saw my bare feet she said, “See?! I told you you’d get sick!” Salt in England and the US is thrown over the shoulder is when you spill salt. Bread - if you drop bread in Greece, you kiss it. In Turkey, it’s considered bad luck to cut bread; it should be torn. And if you see a random piece or loaf bread on the ground outside, you always pick it up and put it on a wall or somewhere off the ground. In Greece the unlucky date is Tuesday the 13th. I asked for explanations and all the old ladies could ever tell me was that it was “triti dekatreis” (“Tuesday” is “third” and something about “third thirteen.” And Jesus.) I heard the sweeping feet superstition from a girl from Puerto Rico many years ago. Evil eye beliefs deserve a whole book because they are spread over such a huge area… The olive oil in water thing is in Greece also. The prayers/words are a secret, and either a man or a woman can do it, but if you were a man you have to learn it from a woman, and if you’re a woman, you have to learn it from a man. Also you would always hang evil eye charms on a baby that hasn’t been baptized yet. In Turkey if you drop a tea glass (they’re small and very fragile) and it doesn’t break, it’s an indication of evil eye, and so to avoid it, you should break the glass.
I think the horse shoe has to come from the magical nature of smithing and forging iron, see Weyland Smith, also iron was protection against “the good people” ei Fairies so it’s a combination of the smith energy and keeping the mischievousness of the fey at bay. Also holding the horse upright so the luck stays inside and if you need to drain bad luck or (get rid of unwanted guests) turn the horseshoe U down.
Mom always said that it was an Italian tradition that if you found the Bay Leaf in your dish it meant you were lucky. I realized later that it really was that the cook either forgot to take it out or couldn't find it and you were lucky you didn't eat it.
My grandmother, a first generation American with Neopolitan roots, drove me crazy when I was growing up with the wet hair thing. My hair is like Eva’s. It takes forever to dry and using a hair dryer frizzes it out. I have wet hair half the day. I told my grandmother daily that illness is caused by viruses and not wet hair. It might make you feel chilly on a cold day, but it won’t directly cause illness,
You guys are too funny…it is windy in Northern California today, so I will stay inside after watching your video! Even though this was not about food, it was grrreat!
My Sicilian-American stepmother freaked out when I put shoes on the table. They were brand new, out of the box, so they weren't dirty or anything. I had to wait until the Internet to look up why...
I was raised with superstitions, too, like walking on the side of the sidewalk closest to the street and letting the lady walk on the safeside. Giving up my seat for elderly people on a train, or making sure to carry heavy loads for the weak, or weary. So I had a lot of superstitions growing up too, and I still do. Oh, and if a black cat crosses your path and it doesn't have a home you have to keep it, take it in and feed it and make sure that it has a good life that's another superstition.
Horse shoes are traditionally made of iron in the past and a a ward against evil spirits, witches and magic. It symbolises strength and power as the horse was a war machine in the past and if you stand it in its open end and imagine yourself inside the center, it is as if you are shielded from harm
So here's the thing I want to see now: A Korean-Italian couple staying with both sets of parents at an AirBNB, and they go to bed with wet hair and the fan on.(To be fair, the things with wet hair and bare feet are valid, if you live in an old drafty stone house, which is far more common in Italy than the in the US. You are indeed more likely to get sick in those cases.)
The only experience I've had with this is from Pennsylvania. I had a friend and went to school with a guy who was half Italian on his mother's side. So he told me one time he wasn't feeling well but he wasn't really sick. His mother arranged for him to see this old woman who he called a witch. She went through some ritual; I can't remember the details but I remember he told me at one point she started burping (?) and at the end she concluded he had the evil eye on him; I guess. She told him to wear the peppers and he very often wore some bracelet with the peppers. He seemed to think her "incantations" worked.
Love the videos, love the food. Harper... man take it easy on the enunciation, it's Realleey StartinG to geT A biT TryinG!!. The Wet hair thing though, that is / was a thing the Uk also, and many people here are not that fond of AC.
I rarely blow dry my hair because I don’t want the heat damage. Still haven’t gotten sick from it. I’m barefoot all the time too 😆. My Greek mother in law said if you spill salt then you have to throw it over the shoulder for luck.
Harper, wet hair is not a superstition AT ALL. I agree with the fact that in a hot summer day, inside your house, it's unnecessary to completely dry your hair, but... It's still a fact that many people, including myself, suffer from serious stiff neck (or dolore cervicale) if they don't dry their hair and go outside in a windy or cold day or they sleep with wet hair pressing on their necks. It's not absurd at all. Some people manage to not get any stiff neck from this, but i don't think it's the majority. That totally goes under scientific, MEDICAL facts and i can PERSONALLY testify. It happens with AC too, but it has to be very very cold to happen. It also dries your mouth and eyes (like the pasta) exposing you to inflammations and infections.
The wet hair thing goes all the way across Europe to Russia. My late wife was staying with a friend of hers when she was a teenager. The friend's father was defector from the Saint Petersberg who had married a local Australian woman, here in Melbourne. My wife-to-be, of British-Australian stock came to breakfast with her hair still wet. The Russian dad was horrified! Such things are not done! They bring bad luck! Oddly, the father was both a scientist, and had installed a swimming pool in the backyard.
I remember the superstition from the Italian side of my family that if your nose itches it meant you were going to get into a fight and to counteract that you had to kiss a fool. It usually resulted in someone kissing their own hand for some reason lol
17 is bad luck because in Roman numerals it was written "XVII" which is an anagram for VIXI i.e. "I lived" implying you died. At least that's the explanation I know.
The drying of the hair is very important in Winter, if going outside, you will get sick for sure if you do not. Not so in Summer. I am Bulgarian, people do dry their hair there. I often do not. I do not think it is a superstition, it is just a heath related fear, which is a little different. Superstitions are usually connected with supernatural, not with things that are based on real life situations. Bare feet is the same, it is ok in Summer, but can get you sick in Winter. In general though, do not walk barefoot, if you are not planning to shower before getting into your bedsheets. Not hygienic, even at home. AC can get you sick, it is a fact, but only in some situations - blowing air directly on you, bacterias and mold, etc. I still use AC though, but not if my hair is wet (same as being out in winter). The “🌶️” is pretty much the only thing that fits “superstition” in the first 13 minutes. (This is where I have gotten to so far, watching).
My family is not Italian at all... more German, in Georgia, but my mother always told me never let someone sweep under your feet or over your shoes...you'll never get married. I knew about the salt, as well. I just love the two of you.
As far as I understand from whatI heard from specialists is that air conditiong can make you ill. Not because of the fan but because the air conditioning also makes the air very dry and this can affect your nose and throat. It will dry out the tissue and with that the protective layer of mucus disappears and microbes can more easily enter.
So when I'm in Italy, if it's a windy day, I'll have to walk outside with wet hair and bare feet to show what crazy people Americans are. 😂 I've been teased by my Italian tutor about our fondness for air conditioning.
Holy crap, didn't you used to live in Maine? I lived in NH and we used to walk around in the winter with wet hair and shorts and no jackets all the time.
Well, I looked up the horseshoes. It listed several different sources of luck that came from them. First, it’s just that in ancient times there were moon goddesses, and it’s kind of shaped like a crescent moon. Next, some Catholic priest in the 900s supposedly put a horseshoe on the devil’s cloven hoof, so that made them lucky. Also lucky as the fact that they usually use seven nails. Lastly, they are made of iron, which has been seen to ward of evil all through humanity. I personally have heard that if you hang it so that it looks like a U it will catch the bad luck as it comes in the door.
My best friends Italian mother had an elephant statue with an upturned turn in every room for good luck. My Sicilian grandmother had me hold my white gold wedding band on a chain in front of my wife’s pregnant belly, depending on the direction of the swing, determined the se of the baby. It was correct.
the broom one we have in parts of mexico too. both of my parents are mexican descent but according to 23&me , i am part italian wonder if this is where it originated from😯
Ha Ha I have heard many of those superstitions - my sister wont go out if she showers in the morning - cuz she will get sick etc - I know most of those - my Mom said to have something red near your front door so that someone coming to fight with you looses their passion for the fight. My Mom believes in the Mallocio too - we lost our person that can remove it. ha ha - such fun. but don't mess around cuz you don't want the mallocio!!!! Take care
Beware the ides of March. Warning to Ceasar. That may be where that comes from. If you drop a knife, never pick it up without first stepping on rhe blade first. Not to do so will result in bad luck. ( and perhaps injury if you don't have shoes on) . There is another side to " the evil eye" . It's called being overlooked. My grandmother explained it this way. Let's say you have a new shirt. It looks great on you, people compliment you. Sure enough you wind up spilling oil on yourself . No one actively wished you ill but they, inadvertently, overlooked you. Like your winning in cards and someone says " you're lucky tonight" and then you start losing. That is being overlooked. A horn, or even a red ribbon, will ward off being overlooked.
The real bit of the wind stuff is: sweating and cooling rapidly can like contract your muscles, so if you use the fan all night you can get some cramps, usually in the neck. But it happens more to some, less to others. I use the fan all night with no problems and I'm italian. There seems to be also some truth about the AC and the wind, simply linked to rapid change in body temperatures which apparently causes your immune system to be more susceptible to viruses for a while. So yeah, you got the flu bc of the crazy amount of people, but you may have got it because you were hit by the "colpo di freddo" and in that crowdy moment your defences were low. There is some sense to the madness But yeah the horns, the salt, much of this is total bs ofc. I think it's a cool cultural heritage, I like it even, But thinking that some people around actually believe this stuff, and like throw salt around, it makes me a bit mad Problem is, sometimes it's all connected with religion. If you look at it a bit closer, you'll find that in the very religious people (at least italians), often superstition and religion merge into one horrible thing which they feel entitled to practice. Like, throw some salt in the morning, kiss your saint's figurine later, pray at lunch, then touch the horns when you see a black cat coming back from work... haha what a crazy world
Oh yea my Sicilian grandmother would take me into the closet with here and her rosary beads And get down on her knees and start praying in Italian every time it would thunder and lightning.
The use of salt to dispel evil is ancient. The Church used it in the ritual for baptism, and even today it remains optional. As well when holy water is blessed.
Ok - so I see most of this as superstition except the AC but not for the reasons in this video. AC has condensation accumulating and mold grows in it. I'm sooooo very allergic to it. My nose will stuff up and my sinuses totally clog up when I'm in AC - as soon as I go outside - it all starts to break up in seconds. Back in side, nose stuffs up again in under a minute. It's unbearable to be around. I live in LA and have fans going al the time (that wind doesn't get me sick hahaha) but never never never put on the AC. Everyone in my building has AC going all summer - everyone except me.
24:34 Nemmeno questa cosa delle signorine dove si siedono a tavola e la scopa che va a finire sulla scarpa, non ho mai sentito dalle mie parti in sud Italia.
So if wet hair makes you sick, so Italians not go swimming in outdoor pools or at the beach? Because at that point you have wet hair outside for a while.
In my culture, women do not place their purses on the floor because if you do, the "money will run away" and you will never be rich😂. Also MSC cruise ships do not have a 17th floor--PROVEN!!
@@user-dq7xd9ol9u Yes, I didn't know that myself until about 5 years ago when I did a floral arrangement for a funeral that included horseshoes, and I put them in upside down.
We had a horse shoe hung the wrong way at our door into the house thru the basement , one day someone finally said ‘ Whoa ! That’s the wrong way , bad luck ‘ ! My dad fixed it right away !😜
One more: one of my Italian aunts would dip her thumb in olive oil, rub it on your forehead in a cross patern while reciting a prayer against the evil eye. This was done to ward off any bad outcomes when going into situations such as a job interview, upcoming surgery, buying a house, you name it... that thumb and olive oil were always on call. 😅
It’s because chrism oil used by Catholic priests is olive oil. In some liturgical ceremonies, the priest makes a sign of the cross on the forehead. The oil is blessed and even exorcised!
True, but literally the only way the background plot in Pride and Prejudice actually makes sense is if you acknowledge the zombie invasion at the time.
Having lived in Bulgaria for 4 years, I can vouch that this category of superstitions regarding the wind and wet hair are pretty much exactly the same across much of southern Europe. Especially if the wind hits your neck - you can pretty much blame that for everything that goes wrong in your life. As a Canadian, I can state categorically that wind and cold air does not make you sick. If that were the case, we would have all been dead a long time ago.
You're right about it being a superstition all over Europe. I remember a friend in England being flabbergasted when her doctor told her not to go out with wet hair or she would catch a cold.
I remember older people telling me not to go outside with my hair wet, or I’d catch a cold. But that was in winter. I don’t remember anyone saying it in summer. (We lived in Texas, by the way.
One of the origin of the bad luck of 17 is this: 17 in latin is written as XVII and you rearrange it as VIXI and vixi in latin means "I lived" as in "now I'm dead"....
There is that, and Friday is considered bad luck because that's supposedly the day Jesus died. So Friday is now also considered to be a day of penance. So Friday 17th is considered to be 2 bad luck symbols combined into 1 day.
I didn't know this about the number 17. A long time ago, my mother made a large batch of meatballs. We ate some for dinner, and I was putting the rest away for another day. Mom asked me to count the meatballs -- there were 17. She asked to me to eat one of them, so there would be 16 to put away (I was happy to do that). Now, I know why (at the time, I just thought it was something about prime numbers). 😄
In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, we are warned to beware the Ides of March, I.e. the 17th, which was the day Julius Caesar was assassinated. If this was based truly in history, the number 17 would be a concern!
As a nurse, I have had to become educated a little bit about old wives tales and how they occurred. Back in the day before people knew about germs, they had no idea how they got sick. However, they noticed that babies that were not thickly covered, people with wet hair, and children without coats became ill more often than others. This was because all of these actions can depress the immune response to germs and viruses by allowing the body to become chilled, causing stress to the body. Of course, you have to have wet hair AND contact with a disease to get sick, but they didn’t know that, and that was the best thing they could come up with.
I'm planning a trip to Italy and I'm not looking forward to being considered odd for not drying my hair before going out. I never dry my hair and don't own a hair dryer and while I get colds I've never noticed getting one due to wet hair.
Laughed so hard at some of these!!! I'm from Texas and my husband is Austrian and I've lived in Austria for 21 years now. A number of these ring true for people here as well. When I first came here I had a lovely woman who tutored me in German. It was the summer of 2003 - the first of the really brutal summers during which hundreds of people actually died in France because of the heat. Anyway, my tutor had just walked to my flat from the next town over - about 2 miles away and it was over 100 degrees F that day. When she got there I offered her some tea and she said that sounded lovely. I went to the fridge to get out my pitcher of homemade ice tea and the look of horror I saw on her face - she couldn't believe I would offer her something COLD on such a hot day after a long walk. Didn't I know that it would send her entire body into shock??? Of course, if you are in a 100 degree sauna and come out and plunge yourself into ice cold water, it's completely healthy, but stay as far away as possible from cold drinks on hot days! 🤣
Many deaths occur every year, mostly among the elderly, during heatwaves in Italy due to sheer ignorance and superstition regarding much needed air conditioning and fans. Attitudes of so called "caring" relatives around these deaths, which could have been avoided, are often cavalier and medieval. It's frightening. Basically it boils down to just not wanting to consume and having to pay an electric bill.
There are a lot of folk beliefs in different cultures about the effects of hot and cold drinks on the body, it seems to have something to do with the ancient concept of “the four humors” (blood, bile, phlegm, and “black bile”) and “the four elements” (earth, air, fire, and water) being influenced by “the four qualities” (hot, cold, wet, and dry). But, as a Texan myself, I’ve found that most Europeans are simply shocked at the idea of iced tea. They see tea as something to be drunk hot, not cold.
@@censusgary- well, in terms of medical fact, cold fluids are a little harder on your stomach because your body won't absorb anything until it's brought up to body temperature. So if you're trying to *hydrate* quickly, drink room-temp water. Cold drinks on a hot day do taste really refreshing though!
My grandmother's family came from "the Old Country," which was called Bohemia at the time. Whenever someone dropped a knife, fork or spoon, she would say with utter confidence, "Company is coming!"
I'm not a superstitious person but I remember an episode of M*A*S*H where bad luck and superstition was the focus of the show and at one point Radar was about to hang up a horseshoe above a door for luck and Colonel Potter told him not to hang it with the ends pointing down ∩ because if you do then all the luck will run out, so it needs to be hung with the "arms" pointing up U to catch all the luck.
It’s actually known in some places,to be hung upside down above a door so that the luck will pour out on you as you walk under it 🤷♀️ just depends on where you’re from.
Pretty sure that Calabria is the most superstitious part of Italy... OK maybe it's a tie with Sicily. But for sure both of these regions still continue the tradition of following many old superstitions (or at least going through the motions) than the rest of Italy.
Molocchio, the wet hair, the wind, and when a pregnant woman says something smells good, they have to eat some or the baby will be born with a birthmark in the shape of the food. This was my upbringing. This was such a fun show. Thanks for bringing memories of my Grandmother and Mother back. Father's family from Calabria, Mother's family from Sicily. I know all the superstitions. 😃
I’m from Virginia, USA. And we have the same superstitious. And my 83 yr old grandma has a birthday mark that looks like a strawberry and turns pinkish red (with the little seeds and all 🤯) in the spring and summer. Her mother wanted strawberries so bad when she was pregnant with my grandma and couldn’t get them 🤷🏽♀️.
Throwing away bread it's quite a crime in Italy, especially in the South, i didn't know about the kiss before throwing It in the trash, in Sicily we make bread crumbs from stale bread and think 1000 times before throwing It away
I wanted to read more about "colpo d'aria" and the first result was Google translate. It directly translates to English as "air stroke". 😂 Now, I know what you mean. If I fall asleep with the fan in the window, I will wake up with a stiff neck, joint aches, and sinus congestion. So I will call it "colpo d'aria" from here on out forever. ❤
It's curious since I used my air purifier as a fan as well, always have it on. I never get sick, whether the room is hot or cold. I hate stale unmoving air, but then again I rarely get sick.
@@jayc1139 I don't like still air either and it ONLY happens if I leave my window open overnight. We sleep with a/c on all summer. And a fan all winter. It has something to do with the outside overnight air coming in the window which is over my bed.
In the Abruzzi region, the horn is worn as protection AGAINST the maloccio (translation: The Evil Eye). The horn itself does not represent the evil eye.
For the ones interested, i would suggest to read Ernesto De Martino's "A theory from the South", which is an anthropological research about southern italy's superstitions, magics and esotherical traditions. Its language is obviously highly technical, but still very easy and enjoyable to read 😊
There are many similar beliefs in Lebanon snd Syria. My sister was told by her Lebanese Armenian mother-in-law that you never talk about how beautiful someone's baby is becausr that will draw the attention of the evil eye. We lived in Greece and Beirut during high school and college and there are so many similarities to Italian beliefs.
The Fear of AC/AirCon- in the strictest sense: yes, AC can make you sick, if you do not do regular maintenance, such as changing the filter on a regular basis. Yes, all artificially controlled temperature of your home, will change the humidity inside the home, that includes wood burning fire. In the old country, they learned how to control the humidity centuries ago, and don't understand, the same measures should be taken with the AC. I remember as a teen, I got a summer job working at a church child care center, where I was in charge of the older kids. We were put into the recreational building that had no AC. I would come home to the AC, and my sinuses couldn't handle the change in temperature and I'd spend all night fighting a sinus headache. After a week of this, I closed my AC vent, and my door at night, and slept with the windows open and a box fan.
The dehydrating effect of AC,- hence the pasta dow wreckage- is still soooo ill-managed, that when I worked in Paris CDG airport, back in my young student life, I knew, whether winter or summer-time, that I'd have to put up with chronic laryngitis for the whole length of my mission : I 'd walk in the premisses and lose half of my voice within 20 minutes, and sounded very successfully husky and seductive 😂, for the entire day, and would have this happen day in day out, with or without a scarf, jumper, jacket, YNI...! And I could drink myself sick, and try any trick, there was NO way I could ward it off ...
@@marie-suzankalogeropoulos9249 In my current part of Texas, the summer humidity is less than 10% anyway, so the AC isn't really changing anything. The Heat in the winter is problematic for us, because we get more precipitation in the colder months, and the heater strips it from the air. We keep pots of water simmering on the electric stove to help respiratory tissues not dry out too much.
It's so interesting to know the culture. The things Italians believe would make you sick are the same with Chinese, except little difference with the air-con, Chinese believe air-con is ok, but blowing cold wind directly to your head or neck would make you sick.
Yes, extremely similar in Ireland too. We don't need air con for obvious reasons if you ever visited but the wet hair etc. all very much the same as here.
My wife and I are sore from laughing so much! We're both Australian born and partially raised in Italy as children. We now live in Italy as retirees. Having spent equal amounts of time in Italy and abroad, we understand both points of view on these superstitions. Our parents are in their 90s and still warn us of a "colpo d'aria" as they KNOW it could easily lead to death, or at best a grave illness 😂 Keep up the great work.
Got any fun superstitions-er, "LIFE HACKS"-to share?
Women cannot preserve food by canning while on their monthly.
There is a scientific explanation. A chemical is released during menstruation and when you run your finger around the rim, will cause the lid to not seal.
I'm not a superstitious person but I remember an episode of M*A*S*H where bad luck and superstition was the focus of the show and at one point Radar was about to hang up a horseshoe above a door for luck and Colonel Potter told him not to hang it with the ends pointing down ∩ because if you do then all the luck will run out, so it needs to be hung with the "arms" pointing up U to catch all the luck.
@@John_P._Buryiak That's true.
On New Year's Eve, put money outside your door. Any denomination will do. Then after midnight, You bring the money back in. You will have a prosperous New Year. It hasn't worked for me yet, but I've never lost a large sum of money so I still do it. There are many others, but I was never given the reason for them. It's bad luck to open an umbrella inside the house. Never put a hat on a bed. It's also bad luck to bring your old broom when moving to a new home. If you give a sharp gift to someone (scissors, knives, etc.) you must give a coin in the package, otherwise you sever the relationship. You make sure your head and feet are covered and dry is as important as washing your hands to ward off illness.
My Grandma was Sicilian my Grandfather was from Naples . And from them I learned you can catch a cold in every part of your body . Don't sit in a draft . And the evil eye was a real thing to them.
If you spill your entire bottle of olive oil in North America, you are already very unlucky because the prices of good olive oil are ridiculous expensive now. Your wallet will cry for days, LOL.
A lot of work goes into grow, pruning, harvesting, and taking them to be crushed. We have an olive farm. Weather permitting.
Yup. $79-90 for a 3.5L can of quality oil in Canada. Over twice the price of full synthetic engine oil.
Yep.
Growing up as a second generation Italian-American listening to Ava talk about the different superstitions brought back so many of my childhood memories. I carried many of these superstitions into my marriage and brought my kids up with them. My hubby who is Irish tends to still shake his head at some of them. (Even after 38 years of marriage) Thanks to this video I have clearly been validated! 🎉Thanks Ava😁 Love watching you two. Love from NC. ❤
There's at least one book about superstitions and omens of the Appalachians and Ozarks. About every paragraph has some disaster that will occur if you walk through a gate wrong, or sweep wrong. AND it's a couple of hundred pages. It's a wonder anything gets done. Also explains (besides the moonshine business) why strangers are not welcome. They break the rules constantly. Also their intimate territory starts at the property line and it's common in some areas to "hollar" from the street by the gate rather than go up to the front door. Another faux pas strangers do that irritate. You have to enter the gate properly too or disaster.... Probably a lot is no longer even thought about but at one time it was as good as the law.
Eva! Not Ava!
Not validated. Simply in good company.🤗
It's amazing that any Italian actually gets up in the morning, with all this to worry about.
not til 11 anyway lol
You have no idea. In America they insist on therapy
My late Jamaican grandmother always reminded me that walking around in bare feet would make me sick. Kingston, Jamaica in December never drops below 26°C!!
Walking barefoot can lead to stepping on insects, small animals, or just debris that could bite, sting, or pierce the skin causing poisoning or infection. And infection in a world without effective disinfectants and antibiotics was a bad client. In Greek myth, Philoctetes (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philoctetes) was abandoned on an island to die by his mates because of a small infected wound to his foot.
@@alicetwain You can even get parasites walking around on bare feet, so it definitely isn't entirely meritless advice.
@@alicetwain there’s a parasite that can enter through your heel. I can’t remember what country it happens in mostly, but it’s usually when people are walking barefoot on the beach.
My mother still gets on me about this. Born and raised near Half Way Tree, so...
@@Itsabeautifulday3201 you might be thinking of hookworm. It's contracted by skin contact with excrement contaminated soil.
3:19 Quel sacchettino rosso non l’ho mai visto dalle mie parti (e non sono nato mica ieri !). Per quanto riguarda le superstizioni, c’è da tener presente che varie superstizioni vanno molto in base alla zona, non sono cose che possiamo generalizzare per tutta l’Italia. Giusto per fare un esempio, per queste cose tra Napoli e Milano o Bolzano c’è una grandissima differenza ! Ci sono cose raccontate in questo video che in molte zone d’Italia non sanno nemmeno cosa siano. Tra l’altro certe usanze, anche nella stessa zona, possono esserci in una famiglia e non in un’altra. Qui a volte spesso si parla di esperienze personali, di usanze in un determinato paesino, in qualche famiglia, e gli americani all’ascolto immaginano magari che tutta l’Italia e tutti gli italiani pensino ed agiscano allo stesso modo (e questo ovviamente per quanto riguarda varie cose, non solo per questo tema). Le esperienze di cui parla qui Harper, fatte nel paesino di Eva, molto probabilmente non le avrebbe fatte in una città del Nord Italia.
Ma infatti Eva specifica sempre nel sud italia.
@@ally7329 Allora…. a parte il fatto che il titolo di questo video parla di “superstizioni italiane”, quindi già si generalizza nel titolo del video. Ma ti posso assicurare che alcune cose di cui parla Eva qui in questo video, dalle mie parti (ed anch’io provengo dal sud Italia !) non le ho mai sentite ! Ed io, come dicevo sopra, non sono nato ieri.
Infatti non solo valgono per praticamente tutto il Sud Italia (non certo solo Dasà o la Calabria, ma anche per Campania, Puglia e Sicilia, nel mio caso specifico, ma sicuramente altri aggiungeranno le loro località!), ma addirittura sono perlopiù validi anche x gli altri paesi del 'Sud-Europa', leggasi Spagna, Portogallo, Grecia, ecc.ecc...
@@SeVanSar-vz2ym. Leggi un po’ cosa ho risposto a “ally7329”. Ed io provengo da una zona, da un paesino, nel sud della Campania, quasi vicino alla Calabria.
In una città del Nord come Venezia, passare fra le due colonne in piazza S. Marco è qualcosa che un veneziano non farà mai. Ogni luogo ha le sue tradizioni, ma non si può negare che siamo un popolo superstizioso, in generale.
Now in my 80’s, I grew up in a Hungarian/Romanian household. We have all those Italian superstitions plus loads more. But the one that my husband always laughed about was, if you get a wort, you loosely tie a thread around it, remove the looped thread, bury it beneath the ground where the water runs off the roof, when the string rots your wort will be gone. I saw my mother, great grandmother do this many times for friends and family. Power of positive thinking, if you believe that the superstition is true, than unexplained things can happen. Loved this episode.
Most types of warts eventually go away on their own.
In Russia, there is a superstition that a knife can't be gifted. Only bought. So if you want to gift a knife to someone, you need accept a coin from the person receiving the knife.
Russians are also particular about wet hair outside. Also, one is not supposed to sit on a stone outside (for some reason sitting on the stone is considered a risk to have kidney infection).
Yes...regarding knives, the same is true in italy...but also needles or pins or sharp objects in general. You have to pay them, symbolicaly but pay them. 😉
@@gabrielesantucci6189 In France you cannot offer someone a handkercief as a gift. You need to ask the receiver for a small coin. Otherwise you are provoking an occasion for tears.
The exchange of a coin for a knife is also an English superstition. My mother insisted that I give my aunt some coins for knives given to me as a wedding present.
This is also a tradition in my family.
I remember watching a video where someone (Kim Jong Il?) gave Vladimir Putin a sword as a gift on a state occasion. Putin looked startled and rummaged through his pockets to get some coins to give him. It was a very funny video!
This was so much fun to watch... I am from a Greek background and the wet hair, wind etc., ones are very similar.... we also have a version of the Malocchio... we call it the 'mati or matee'... which basically means the eye. You may have seen jewellery or decorations of a blue circle with a smaller white circle with a black dot in the center... this is an amulet against the evil eye. In the Greek tradition, you can be afflicted by the evil eye both for bad thoughts towards you... this is usually intentional... as well as praise, this is usually unintentional and if the person doing it catches themselves praising you, they will then try and remedy the situation by pretending to 'spit'... you may have seen this if you saw the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding... we usually say something like 'ptew ptew'... this is the idea of reversing the praise.
Now, in my family, my mom was the 'strega' but we don't have a name for the person doing this. She 'stole' the prayer from her aunt who was the 'strega' of the village because my mom spent a lot of time with this aunt as a young girl, and as Eva says, the 'strega' mumbles the prayer under their breath... well, my mom's aunt was hard of hearing so her mumble was louder than most... and since she was often called on to get rid of the mati, my mom learned it from hearing it so often. My mom's mom, my yiayia also was a 'strega' and another way to share this is by teaching it to a young person of the opposite sex. She taught me when I was about 12. You can also learn it by being given the prayer on Thursday before Good Friday.... the latter being the weakest form, the senior to junior the standard version and the 'stolen' version the strongest form. When performing the prayer, and the 'strega' starts yawning enough to make the eyes water, that denotes the person has been zapped with the mati. The more intense the yawning/crying eyes, the stronger the hex. And woe is you if you fall asleep with the mati before you can get rid of it.
Kinda like saving a room of evil?
@@claudettep212 I don't understand this comment.... please clarify....
I Abruzzo i heard much made of "La Voglia". Basically if a pregnant woman sees some food that she then craves but is denied it, wherever she touches herself the baby will have a birthmark that resembles the denied food. So they try to satisfy all cravings and if they cannot the women will touch themselves somewhere that will not be seen and cause obvious disfiguration to her baby.
Love your videos. Even if Eve isn't cooking. Love to hear the banter. And Eva's hair is ALWAYS hairing!!!!!! AMAZING!
"Always hairing ...", how sweet ! 😂
It is, too, I 'my sure it' s related to her consumption of loads of healthy dairy, proper mineral and hormone intake...
Red Ribbon, Evil eye! "Molocchio", Italian horn, the Cimuruta, "Rhue branch amulet'", Mano Corno, "Horned hand", Figa, Quadrofoglio "four-leaf clover", a new broom, And more.
My boss at one of my first jobs is Italian and warned us about the maloykies and said the counter spell to cure the maloykies was to always wear red underwear. I don't know about that, but I do know she made the best Italian eggplant parmigiana in this world.
When I was an alter boy, after the Sunday service, we would wash the crumbs from the Communion wafer tray and the drops in the wine chalice in a special sink with a drain that was not connected to the public waste water system, but had its own underground drain field entirely on sanctified, Church grounds.
That is NOT a superstition. Catholic Churches are still built with a special sink that drains into the holy ground.
@@jerikaylesneski - some Lutherans as well. And correct, not technically a “superstition;” an act of respect may be more correct.
@@johnburk6564 Yeah, considering that, in Catholic theology, the bread and wine are literally transformed into God, it would be sacrilegious to pour God down the drain and into the sewer!
I am a Eucharistic minister and we rinse the chalice and ciborium in one side of the sink, especially designed for consecrated bread and wine, the precious body and blood of Christ.
In Tibetan Buddhism, after food and flowers are offered on the shrine to the Buddhas during a ceremony, they are never thrown in the trash, but brought outside and placed in a clean, high place. It is believed the spirits and ghosts can receive those offering leftovers and that it benefits them.
My Mom wasn't Italian, but she ALWAYS said, "Donna, don't you dare go outside with wet hair" (this was in Texas.. where the daily temperatures could easily go over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer). It is a fact... We lose a lot of heat through our head. I immediately identified with that FACT!!
Are these superstitions common in all of Italy or just in southern Italy? Calabria? Ancestors several thousand years ago came from the Aegean Islands. Did they bring these superstitions and customs with them? Bread? A sacred item in the Church, it represents the body of Christ. In the Orthodox Church bread is passed out to the people after the liturgy. It is given to those who had not prepared themselves to receive the sacrament of communion but if they have not eaten before the liturgy they may partake of it before eating after church otherwise it should be eaten the very next morning before having Drank or eaten anything. It’s interesting how these variations of superstition are shared by people of the eastern Mediterranean region. We have the same thing with the Evil Eye commonly called Tō Mati or Kakō Mati. Same as to how you get it and how it’s cured.
They are common in most of the Southern part of Italy, but also in most part of the Southern countries of Europe, as Spain, Portugal, Greece, etc.
The bare feet thing is in Greece and Turkey as well. We had a cleaning lady in Turkey and she was just sure I was going to get sick because I walked around the house barefooted. I didn’t, for a year or so. Later there was a cold going around that everybody got, including her, but when she saw my bare feet she said, “See?! I told you you’d get sick!”
Salt in England and the US is thrown over the shoulder is when you spill salt.
Bread - if you drop bread in Greece, you kiss it. In Turkey, it’s considered bad luck to cut bread; it should be torn. And if you see a random piece or loaf bread on the ground outside, you always pick it up and put it on a wall or somewhere off the ground.
In Greece the unlucky date is Tuesday the 13th. I asked for explanations and all the old ladies could ever tell me was that it was “triti dekatreis” (“Tuesday” is “third” and something about “third thirteen.” And Jesus.)
I heard the sweeping feet superstition from a girl from Puerto Rico many years ago.
Evil eye beliefs deserve a whole book because they are spread over such a huge area… The olive oil in water thing is in Greece also. The prayers/words are a secret, and either a man or a woman can do it, but if you were a man you have to learn it from a woman, and if you’re a woman, you have to learn it from a man.
Also you would always hang evil eye charms on a baby that hasn’t been baptized yet.
In Turkey if you drop a tea glass (they’re small and very fragile) and it doesn’t break, it’s an indication of evil eye, and so to avoid it, you should break the glass.
I think the horse shoe has to come from the magical nature of smithing and forging iron, see Weyland Smith, also iron was protection against “the good people” ei Fairies so it’s a combination of the smith energy and keeping the mischievousness of the fey at bay.
Also holding the horse upright so the luck stays inside and if you need to drain bad luck or (get rid of unwanted guests) turn the horseshoe U down.
Mom always said that it was an Italian tradition that if you found the Bay Leaf in your dish it meant you were lucky.
I realized later that it really was that the cook either forgot to take it out or couldn't find it and you were lucky you didn't eat it.
As someone who lives in humid as hell Houston, TX, the air conditioning thing is gleefully sacrificed.
2:15 Re: horseshoes and luck, see folk lore on iron. Fun and educational as usual.
2:38 Wow. That's funny. In Chinese culture, they give red envelopes filled with something as gifts during Lunar New Year.
My grandmother, a first generation American with Neopolitan roots, drove me crazy when I was growing up with the wet hair thing. My hair is like Eva’s. It takes forever to dry and using a hair dryer frizzes it out. I have wet hair half the day. I told my grandmother daily that illness is caused by viruses and not wet hair. It might make you feel chilly on a cold day, but it won’t directly cause illness,
You guys are too funny…it is windy in Northern California today, so I will stay inside after watching your video! Even though this was not about food, it was grrreat!
Apt held a high value in Roman times, so keeping a bag was useful.
My Sicilian-American stepmother freaked out when I put shoes on the table. They were brand new, out of the box, so they weren't dirty or anything. I had to wait until the Internet to look up why...
Same here in Norway, no shoes on tables, or handbags.
@@toneolafsdatter In France no hats on beds. No one could ever give me a reason.
I was raised with superstitions, too, like walking on the side of the sidewalk closest to the street and letting the lady walk on the safeside. Giving up my seat for elderly people on a train, or making sure to carry heavy loads for the weak, or weary. So I had a lot of superstitions growing up too, and I still do. Oh, and if a black cat crosses your path and it doesn't have a home you have to keep it, take it in and feed it and make sure that it has a good life that's another superstition.
Those aren’t superstitions. Those are manners and morals.
Those are natural human kindnesses, not superstitions.
Horse shoes are traditionally made of iron in the past and a a ward against evil spirits, witches and magic. It symbolises strength and power as the horse was a war machine in the past and if you stand it in its open end and imagine yourself inside the center, it is as if you are shielded from harm
No singles at the corner of the table is great, forces more conversation.
I REALLY enjoyed this. This was fun and fascinating.
This is great. We need a volume 2
So here's the thing I want to see now: A Korean-Italian couple staying with both sets of parents at an AirBNB, and they go to bed with wet hair and the fan on.(To be fair, the things with wet hair and bare feet are valid, if you live in an old drafty stone house, which is far more common in Italy than the in the US. You are indeed more likely to get sick in those cases.)
The only experience I've had with this is from Pennsylvania. I had a friend and went to school with a guy who was half Italian on his mother's side. So he told me one time he wasn't feeling well but he wasn't really sick. His mother arranged for him to see this old woman who he called a witch. She went through some ritual; I can't remember the details but I remember he told me at one point she started burping (?) and at the end she concluded he had the evil eye on him; I guess. She told him to wear the peppers and he very often wore some bracelet with the peppers. He seemed to think her "incantations" worked.
Love the videos, love the food. Harper... man take it easy on the enunciation, it's Realleey StartinG to geT A biT TryinG!!. The Wet hair thing though, that is / was a thing the Uk also, and many people here are not that fond of AC.
Air conditioning plus fans is a must 😀
I rarely blow dry my hair because I don’t want the heat damage. Still haven’t gotten sick from it. I’m barefoot all the time too 😆.
My Greek mother in law said if you spill salt then you have to throw it over the shoulder for luck.
Harper, wet hair is not a superstition AT ALL. I agree with the fact that in a hot summer day, inside your house, it's unnecessary to completely dry your hair, but...
It's still a fact that many people, including myself, suffer from serious stiff neck (or dolore cervicale) if they don't dry their hair and go outside in a windy or cold day or they sleep with wet hair pressing on their necks.
It's not absurd at all. Some people manage to not get any stiff neck from this, but i don't think it's the majority.
That totally goes under scientific, MEDICAL facts and i can PERSONALLY testify.
It happens with AC too, but it has to be very very cold to happen. It also dries your mouth and eyes (like the pasta) exposing you to inflammations and infections.
I love the two of you.
The wet hair thing goes all the way across Europe to Russia. My late wife was staying with a friend of hers when she was a teenager. The friend's father was defector from the Saint Petersberg who had married a local Australian woman, here in Melbourne. My wife-to-be, of British-Australian stock came to breakfast with her hair still wet. The Russian dad was horrified! Such things are not done! They bring bad luck!
Oddly, the father was both a scientist, and had installed a swimming pool in the backyard.
I remember the superstition from the Italian side of my family that if your nose itches it meant you were going to get into a fight and to counteract that you had to kiss a fool. It usually resulted in someone kissing their own hand for some reason lol
My Australian Irish heart broke as you waved that horse shoe around! All the luck is gone!
17 is bad luck because in Roman numerals it was written "XVII" which is an anagram for VIXI i.e. "I lived" implying you died.
At least that's the explanation I know.
The drying of the hair is very important in Winter, if going outside, you will get sick for sure if you do not. Not so in Summer. I am Bulgarian, people do dry their hair there. I often do not. I do not think it is a superstition, it is just a heath related fear, which is a little different. Superstitions are usually connected with supernatural, not with things that are based on real life situations. Bare feet is the same, it is ok in Summer, but can get you sick in Winter. In general though, do not walk barefoot, if you are not planning to shower before getting into your bedsheets. Not hygienic, even at home. AC can get you sick, it is a fact, but only in some situations - blowing air directly on you, bacterias and mold, etc. I still use AC though, but not if my hair is wet (same as being out in winter).
The “🌶️” is pretty much the only thing that fits “superstition” in the first 13 minutes. (This is where I have gotten to so far, watching).
My family is not Italian at all... more German, in Georgia, but my mother always told me never let someone sweep under your feet or over your shoes...you'll never get married. I knew about the salt, as well.
I just love the two of you.
As far as I understand from whatI heard from specialists is that air conditiong can make you ill. Not because of the fan but because the air conditioning also makes the air very dry and this can affect your nose and throat. It will dry out the tissue and with that the protective layer of mucus disappears and microbes can more easily enter.
Air conditioning takes moisture out of the room, which is good for drying clothes but unfortunately also dries out fresh dough as well.
Do not hang up your horseshoe with the open side pointing down, or all the luck will run out. Science.
That video was a lot of fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU!
I always thought the red pepper was to keep your spouse from cheating on you.
I should have had one of those…or many😢😅
Depends on WHERE the red pepper is applied.
March? Non è novembre?
I live in Tennessee and my mom would tell me to be careful when washing the dishes because if I got my shirt tail wet, I would never get married LOL.
So when I'm in Italy, if it's a windy day, I'll have to walk outside with wet hair and bare feet to show what crazy people Americans are. 😂 I've been teased by my Italian tutor about our fondness for air conditioning.
Holy crap, didn't you used to live in Maine? I lived in NH and we used to walk around in the winter with wet hair and shorts and no jackets all the time.
I live in Turkey and bread is never thrown away. We save all the old bread to give to a neighbor, who feeds it to his sheep and goats.
Another instance in which Greeks = Italians HAHA
All these superstitions and 'makes you sick' is ALL I've heard all my life HAHA
……but which way up do you hang the horseshoe……….[slowly backs away to watch the fireworks]
Well, I looked up the horseshoes. It listed several different sources of luck that came from them. First, it’s just that in ancient times there were moon goddesses, and it’s kind of shaped like a crescent moon. Next, some Catholic priest in the 900s supposedly put a horseshoe on the devil’s cloven hoof, so that made them lucky. Also lucky as the fact that they usually use seven nails. Lastly, they are made of iron, which has been seen to ward of evil all through humanity. I personally have heard that if you hang it so that it looks like a U it will catch the bad luck as it comes in the door.
My best friends Italian mother had an elephant statue with an upturned turn in every room for good luck. My Sicilian grandmother had me hold my white gold wedding band on a chain in front of my wife’s pregnant belly, depending on the direction of the swing, determined the se of the baby. It was correct.
the broom one we have in parts of mexico too. both of my parents are mexican descent but according to 23&me , i am part italian wonder if this is where it originated from😯
Ha Ha I have heard many of those superstitions - my sister wont go out if she showers in the morning - cuz she will get sick etc - I know most of those - my Mom said to have something red near your front door so that someone coming to fight with you looses their passion for the fight. My Mom believes in the Mallocio too - we lost our person that can remove it. ha ha - such fun. but don't mess around cuz you don't want the mallocio!!!! Take care
Beware the ides of March. Warning to Ceasar. That may be where that comes from. If you drop a knife, never pick it up without first stepping on rhe blade first. Not to do so will result in bad luck. ( and perhaps injury if you don't have shoes on) . There is another side to " the evil eye" . It's called being overlooked. My grandmother explained it this way. Let's say you have a new shirt. It looks great on you, people compliment you. Sure enough you wind up spilling oil on yourself . No one actively wished you ill but they, inadvertently, overlooked you. Like your winning in cards and someone says " you're lucky tonight" and then you start losing. That is being overlooked. A horn, or even a red ribbon, will ward off being overlooked.
If it's raining AND windy in Italy...c'est la vie 🤷🏼♂
The real bit of the wind stuff is: sweating and cooling rapidly can like contract your muscles, so if you use the fan all night you can get some cramps, usually in the neck. But it happens more to some, less to others. I use the fan all night with no problems and I'm italian. There seems to be also some truth about the AC and the wind, simply linked to rapid change in body temperatures which apparently causes your immune system to be more susceptible to viruses for a while. So yeah, you got the flu bc of the crazy amount of people, but you may have got it because you were hit by the "colpo di freddo" and in that crowdy moment your defences were low. There is some sense to the madness
But yeah the horns, the salt, much of this is total bs ofc. I think it's a cool cultural heritage, I like it even, But thinking that some people around actually believe this stuff, and like throw salt around, it makes me a bit mad
Problem is, sometimes it's all connected with religion. If you look at it a bit closer, you'll find that in the very religious people (at least italians), often superstition and religion merge into one horrible thing which they feel entitled to practice. Like, throw some salt in the morning, kiss your saint's figurine later, pray at lunch, then touch the horns when you see a black cat coming back from work... haha what a crazy world
Fantastici!!!
Oh yea my Sicilian grandmother would take me into the closet with here and her rosary beads And get down on her knees and start praying in Italian every time it would thunder and lightning.
"The Ides of March"....when Cesar was assassinated. bad luck, period
The use of salt to dispel evil is ancient. The Church used it in the ritual for baptism, and even today it remains optional. As well when holy water is blessed.
Ok - so I see most of this as superstition except the AC but not for the reasons in this video. AC has condensation accumulating and mold grows in it. I'm sooooo very allergic to it. My nose will stuff up and my sinuses totally clog up when I'm in AC - as soon as I go outside - it all starts to break up in seconds. Back in side, nose stuffs up again in under a minute. It's unbearable to be around. I live in LA and have fans going al the time (that wind doesn't get me sick hahaha) but never never never put on the AC. Everyone in my building has AC going all summer - everyone except me.
24:34 Nemmeno questa cosa delle signorine dove si siedono a tavola e la scopa che va a finire sulla scarpa, non ho mai sentito dalle mie parti in sud Italia.
So if wet hair makes you sick, so Italians not go swimming in outdoor pools or at the beach? Because at that point you have wet hair outside for a while.
the ides of march
Some superstitions are similar to the portuguese ones. I guess it is a latin or mediterranean thing.
In my culture, women do not place their purses on the floor because if you do, the "money will run away" and you will never be rich😂. Also MSC cruise ships do not have a 17th floor--PROVEN!!
Hiding a bag of salt comes from the time when salt was used as a trading currency.. its good luck, if you stash a secret bag of cash in your house ;)
I heard that finding the crust of bread behind a door is extremely bad luck to Italians. Is that true?
Eva don’t ever go to Japan.
OMG!!! Eva was holding the horseshoe UPSIDE DOWN. You have to hold it facing up, or all the good luck with run out of it.
@@user-dq7xd9ol9u Yes, I didn't know that myself until about 5 years ago when I did a floral arrangement for a funeral that included horseshoes, and I put them in upside down.
We had a horse shoe hung the wrong way at our door into the house thru the basement , one day someone finally said ‘ Whoa ! That’s the wrong way , bad luck ‘ ! My dad fixed it right away !😜
It’s funny March 17 that St. Patrick’s Day.🌱🌏❤️
Her literally shaking the luck out of it on camera gave me anxiety.
One more: one of my Italian aunts would dip her thumb in olive oil, rub it on your forehead in a cross patern while reciting a prayer against the evil eye. This was done to ward off any bad outcomes when going into situations such as a job interview, upcoming surgery, buying a house, you name it... that thumb and olive oil were always on call. 😅
It’s because chrism oil used by Catholic priests is olive oil. In some liturgical ceremonies, the priest makes a sign of the cross on the forehead. The oil is blessed and even exorcised!
It's a huge act of love.❤
How did that prayer go? Was it in Italian? Curious.
And how did turning up to a job interview with a shiny forehead work out? 🤣
It’s a cheap variation on actual myrrh oil, sold in all Christian churches!
The DaVinci code is as historically relevant and accurate as Abraham Lincoln's Vampire Hunting career.
It's a great book.
@@HansDelbruck53 yep, great fiction!
@@chiccachannel With lots of factual content as well.
True, but literally the only way the background plot in Pride and Prejudice actually makes sense is if you acknowledge the zombie invasion at the time.
Ahahahahahaha Top
Having lived in Bulgaria for 4 years, I can vouch that this category of superstitions regarding the wind and wet hair are pretty much exactly the same across much of southern Europe. Especially if the wind hits your neck - you can pretty much blame that for everything that goes wrong in your life. As a Canadian, I can state categorically that wind and cold air does not make you sick. If that were the case, we would have all been dead a long time ago.
You're right about it being a superstition all over Europe. I remember a friend in England being flabbergasted when her doctor told her not to go out with wet hair or she would catch a cold.
I remember older people telling me not to go outside with my hair wet, or I’d catch a cold. But that was in winter. I don’t remember anyone saying it in summer. (We lived in Texas, by the way.
But it's true! I always get sick when the wind is going at me
@@robbymonaco3738Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
I love the way Harper plays along with Eva's superstitions.....now that is a man that understands the importance of having a peaceful home
One of the origin of the bad luck of 17 is this: 17 in latin is written as XVII and you rearrange it as VIXI and vixi in latin means "I lived" as in "now I'm dead"....
But I used to live. I still do but I used to too.
There is that, and Friday is considered bad luck because that's supposedly the day Jesus died. So Friday is now also considered to be a day of penance. So Friday 17th is considered to be 2 bad luck symbols combined into 1 day.
I didn't know this about the number 17. A long time ago, my mother made a large batch of meatballs. We ate some for dinner, and I was putting the rest away for another day. Mom asked me to count the meatballs -- there were 17. She asked to me to eat one of them, so there would be 16 to put away (I was happy to do that). Now, I know why (at the time, I just thought it was something about prime numbers). 😄
In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, we are warned to beware the Ides of March, I.e. the 17th, which was the day Julius Caesar was assassinated. If this was based truly in history, the number 17 would be a concern!
@@janicestewart4347- except that refers to the 15th of March. Close though :)
As a nurse, I have had to become educated a little bit about old wives tales and how they occurred. Back in the day before people knew about germs, they had no idea how they got sick. However, they noticed that babies that were not thickly covered, people with wet hair, and children without coats became ill more often than others. This was because all of these actions can depress the immune response to germs and viruses by allowing the body to become chilled, causing stress to the body. Of course, you have to have wet hair AND contact with a disease to get sick, but they didn’t know that, and that was the best thing they could come up with.
It bothers me so much that people still believe in “catching a cold”.
That being said : ACs often carry diseases and allergens, so this one is justified (cold + pathogens, or allergic reactions)
I'm planning a trip to Italy and I'm not looking forward to being considered odd for not drying my hair before going out. I never dry my hair and don't own a hair dryer and while I get colds I've never noticed getting one due to wet hair.
@@saulemaroussault6343 Since the alleged pandemic my ideas about sickness and medicine have radically changed.
@@saulemaroussault6343ikr!
Don’t open an umbrella in the house! 😂
This I think applies a little bit everywhere. 😀
I'm under one right now. We'll see how that goes I guess.
No shoes on the table… even if they were new and in the shoebox.
Laughed so hard at some of these!!! I'm from Texas and my husband is Austrian and I've lived in Austria for 21 years now. A number of these ring true for people here as well. When I first came here I had a lovely woman who tutored me in German. It was the summer of 2003 - the first of the really brutal summers during which hundreds of people actually died in France because of the heat. Anyway, my tutor had just walked to my flat from the next town over - about 2 miles away and it was over 100 degrees F that day. When she got there I offered her some tea and she said that sounded lovely. I went to the fridge to get out my pitcher of homemade ice tea and the look of horror I saw on her face - she couldn't believe I would offer her something COLD on such a hot day after a long walk. Didn't I know that it would send her entire body into shock??? Of course, if you are in a 100 degree sauna and come out and plunge yourself into ice cold water, it's completely healthy, but stay as far away as possible from cold drinks on hot days! 🤣
Many deaths occur every year, mostly among the elderly, during heatwaves in Italy due to sheer ignorance and superstition regarding much needed air conditioning and fans. Attitudes of so called "caring" relatives around these deaths, which could have been avoided, are often cavalier and medieval. It's frightening. Basically it boils down to just not wanting to consume and having to pay an electric bill.
There are a lot of folk beliefs in different cultures about the effects of hot and cold drinks on the body, it seems to have something to do with the ancient concept of “the four humors” (blood, bile, phlegm, and “black bile”) and “the four elements” (earth, air, fire, and water) being influenced by “the four qualities” (hot, cold, wet, and dry).
But, as a Texan myself, I’ve found that most Europeans are simply shocked at the idea of iced tea. They see tea as something to be drunk hot, not cold.
@@censusgary- well, in terms of medical fact, cold fluids are a little harder on your stomach because your body won't absorb anything until it's brought up to body temperature. So if you're trying to *hydrate* quickly, drink room-temp water. Cold drinks on a hot day do taste really refreshing though!
@@bethb5915 In hot weather, though, cold drinks help cool the body’s core.
My grandmother's family came from "the Old Country," which was called Bohemia at the time. Whenever someone dropped a knife, fork or spoon, she would say with utter confidence, "Company is coming!"
Yea, same in my family
Knife on the floor, stranger at the door :)
same in russia
I like that
I'm not a superstitious person but I remember an episode of M*A*S*H where bad luck and superstition was the focus of the show and at one point Radar was about to hang up a horseshoe above a door for luck and Colonel Potter told him not to hang it with the ends pointing down ∩ because if you do then all the luck will run out, so it needs to be hung with the "arms" pointing up U to catch all the luck.
Yes, everyone knows the points of the horseshoe are tacked up
Right, that's where I got that! Thanks for reminding me 👍
It’s actually known in some places,to be hung upside down above a door so that the luck will pour out on you as you walk under it 🤷♀️ just depends on where you’re from.
@@abou8963 "Everybody knows"... 😂
I love the cop just straight up eating a mysterious white powder found in someone's car
Well, his hair was dry, he was wearing shoes, and it wasn't windy, so he knew he wasn't going to get sick.
This conversation between you two was a great show for me.
I love these videos on Italian culture as much as I love the cooking videos. I hope to see more.
Pretty sure that Calabria is the most superstitious part of Italy... OK maybe it's a tie with Sicily.
But for sure both of these regions still continue the tradition of following many old superstitions (or at least going through the motions) than the rest of Italy.
Campania and Apulia are the worst ones.
Stuck in the past
@@tbirdparis are they the most Catholic? My mom had tons of these superstitions, and she was Catholic. Not Italian, but indigenous Canadian
Molocchio, the wet hair, the wind, and when a pregnant woman says something smells good, they have to eat some or the baby will be born with a birthmark in the shape of the food. This was my upbringing. This was such a fun show. Thanks for bringing memories of my Grandmother and Mother back. Father's family from Calabria, Mother's family from Sicily. I know all the superstitions. 😃
I’m from Virginia, USA. And we have the same superstitious. And my 83 yr old grandma has a birthday mark that looks like a strawberry and turns pinkish red (with the little seeds and all 🤯) in the spring and summer. Her mother wanted strawberries so bad when she was pregnant with my grandma and couldn’t get them 🤷🏽♀️.
My nonna told me not to look at anything ugly when I was pregnant, or the baby would be born ugly. 😂
mAlocchio, with A., not as Morocco (Marocco)
Throwing away bread it's quite a crime in Italy, especially in the South, i didn't know about the kiss before throwing It in the trash, in Sicily we make bread crumbs from stale bread and think 1000 times before throwing It away
I wanted to read more about "colpo d'aria" and the first result was Google translate. It directly translates to English as "air stroke". 😂
Now, I know what you mean. If I fall asleep with the fan in the window, I will wake up with a stiff neck, joint aches, and sinus congestion. So I will call it "colpo d'aria" from here on out forever. ❤
It's even more crazy in Korea
@@napoleonfeanor where can I read about it? I'm certainly interested!!
It's curious since I used my air purifier as a fan as well, always have it on. I never get sick, whether the room is hot or cold. I hate stale unmoving air, but then again I rarely get sick.
@@jayc1139 I don't like still air either and it ONLY happens if I leave my window open overnight. We sleep with a/c on all summer. And a fan all winter. It has something to do with the outside overnight air coming in the window which is over my bed.
I also have a (Dyson) air cleaner with non-turbulence fan, and these nights I always keep it on full blast and my window open
In the Abruzzi region, the horn is worn as protection AGAINST the maloccio (translation: The Evil Eye). The horn itself does not represent the evil eye.
In Napoli too
For the ones interested, i would suggest to read Ernesto De Martino's "A theory from the South", which is an anthropological research about southern italy's superstitions, magics and esotherical traditions. Its language is obviously highly technical, but still very easy and enjoyable to read 😊
Is there anything that is only believed in the North or Center?
@@napoleonfeanorMost likely, but many Italian superstitions go deeper than regional, some are unique to villages and historically went no farther.
There are many similar beliefs in Lebanon snd Syria. My sister was told by her Lebanese Armenian mother-in-law that you never talk about how beautiful someone's baby is becausr that will draw the attention of the evil eye. We lived in Greece and Beirut during high school and college and there are so many similarities to Italian beliefs.
The Fear of AC/AirCon- in the strictest sense: yes, AC can make you sick, if you do not do regular maintenance, such as changing the filter on a regular basis.
Yes, all artificially controlled temperature of your home, will change the humidity inside the home, that includes wood burning fire. In the old country, they learned how to control the humidity centuries ago, and don't understand, the same measures should be taken with the AC.
I remember as a teen, I got a summer job working at a church child care center, where I was in charge of the older kids. We were put into the recreational building that had no AC. I would come home to the AC, and my sinuses couldn't handle the change in temperature and I'd spend all night fighting a sinus headache. After a week of this, I closed my AC vent, and my door at night, and slept with the windows open and a box fan.
The dehydrating effect of AC,- hence the pasta dow wreckage- is still soooo ill-managed, that when I worked in Paris CDG airport, back in my young student life, I knew, whether winter or summer-time, that I'd have to put up with chronic laryngitis for the whole length of my mission : I 'd walk in the premisses and lose half of my voice within 20 minutes, and sounded very successfully husky and seductive 😂, for the entire day, and would have this happen day in day out, with or without a scarf, jumper, jacket, YNI...! And I could drink myself sick, and try any trick, there was NO way I could ward it off ...
@@marie-suzankalogeropoulos9249 In my current part of Texas, the summer humidity is less than 10% anyway, so the AC isn't really changing anything. The Heat in the winter is problematic for us, because we get more precipitation in the colder months, and the heater strips it from the air. We keep pots of water simmering on the electric stove to help respiratory tissues not dry out too much.
It's so interesting to know the culture. The things Italians believe would make you sick are the same with Chinese, except little difference with the air-con, Chinese believe air-con is ok, but blowing cold wind directly to your head or neck would make you sick.
Yes, extremely similar in Ireland too. We don't need air con for obvious reasons if you ever visited but the wet hair etc. all very much the same as here.
Don't go outside with wet hair or you'll get sick.
My wife and I are sore from laughing so much! We're both Australian born and partially raised in Italy as children. We now live in Italy as retirees. Having spent equal amounts of time in Italy and abroad, we understand both points of view on these superstitions.
Our parents are in their 90s and still warn us of a "colpo d'aria" as they KNOW it could easily lead to death, or at best a grave illness 😂
Keep up the great work.