🌍 Can We See Love Coming? — 7 Superstitions and Traditions from Around the World – 03
Love is invisible. And yet humans have rarely been content simply to wait for it to arrive. In one place, for instance, there is a road couples are warned not to walk together. In another, a button is handed over on graduation day. And elsewhere still, flowers are tucked under a pillow, in the hope...
Love is invisible.
And yet humans have rarely been content simply to wait for it to arrive.
In one place, for instance, there is a road couples are warned not to walk together.
In another, a button is handed over on graduation day.
And elsewhere still, flowers are tucked under a pillow, in the hope that someone not yet met will appear in a dream.
Not all of these are strictly “superstitions” in the narrow sense, of course. Some are old folk beliefs, others are customs, and still others are simply traditions that continue today for the fun of it.
Underneath them all, though, sits a familiar wish: to catch some early glimpse of a love that hasn’t happened yet.
Superstitions, Customs & Folk Beliefs About Love
| Country | Beliefs and customs |
|---|---|
| 🇰🇷 Korea |
🧱 Couples are warned not to walk together along the stone wall path outside Deoksugung Palace in Seoul, as a popular superstition holds that they will eventually break up. ⚖️ In fact, the story has been associated with the former Seoul Family Court, once located nearby, and the route taken by couples going there. |
| 🇯🇵 Japan |
🎓 On graduation day, it is a well-known custom for a student to give the second button of a school uniform to someone they like. ❤️ The second button is popularly associated with being close to the heart, although in truth several different explanations are given for the origin of the custom. |
| 🇨🇳 China |
🧵 An old Chinese story tells of the Old Man Under the Moon (月下老人), who uses a red cord to bind together a man and woman destined to marry. 🔗 Over time, the story became the basis for the familiar image of the “red thread of fate,” linking love with a bond determined before the couple even meets. |
| 🇫🇮 Finland |
🌼 Around Midsummer, tradition holds that gathering seven different kinds of flowers and placing them under one’s pillow will bring a future spouse into that night’s dream. 📱 In other words, before dating apps existed, you apparently had to go find seven different kinds of flowers first. |
| 🇬🇧 United Kingdom |
👰 An old wedding custom holds that a bride should have “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” 🪙 Over the years, these objects have accumulated symbolic meanings connected with the bride’s past, her new life, borrowed marital happiness and faithfulness — and an older version of the rhyme even adds a silver sixpence in the shoe. |
| 🇧🇷 Brazil |
💒 Saint Anthony has a particularly strong place in Brazilian folklore as the santo casamenteiro — the matchmaking or marriage saint. 🎉 So around the June festivals, numerous simpatias, divinations and folk practices have traditionally been associated with discovering a future partner or hoping for marriage. |
| 🇮🇹 Italy |
🗿 At Juliet’s House in Verona, visitors traditionally touch the right breast of Juliet’s statue for good luck, with local tradition also connecting the gesture with luck in love. 💓 And so visitors from around the world turn to a fictional young woman — whose own love story famously ended in tragedy — for a little luck in love. |
The funny thing is, hardly any of these methods resemble one another.
Some avoid a certain road,
while others hand over a button,
and others still imagine an invisible thread.
Some sleep on a pillow full of flowers,
others carry symbolic objects on their wedding day,
some ask a saint,
and others simply queue up to touch a statue.
In the end, some try to guard love from going wrong,
while others try to summon it before it has even arrived.
The direction may differ, but the hope underneath is much the same: that a love which hasn’t happened yet might somehow be nudged, just a little, in our favour.
OID QUESTION
If love is supposed to be unpredictable,
why do humans keep trying to predict it anyway?
Sources & Further Reading
Seoul Metropolitan Government — Deoksugung stone wall road and its breakup superstition
Japanese school-uniform cultural sources — Graduation-day second-button tradition
National Diet Library Reference Collaborative Database — The Old Man Under the Moon and the red-thread tradition
ThisisFINLAND — Midsummer traditions and seven flowers beneath the pillow
Victoria and Albert Museum — “Old, new, borrowed, blue” and British wedding traditions
Joaquim Nabuco Foundation — Saint Anthony, Festas Juninas, simpatias and marriage divination in Brazilian folklore
Visit Verona — Juliet’s statue and traditions concerning luck and love
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