The thought that terrible things might happen to me when a mirror breaks or a person steps under a ladder is caused by age-old fears called superstitions. Superstitions come from many regions of the world and are taught to us by our parents and grandparents, they are passed down from generation to generation and are believed to be omens of things that can go wrong. According to Webster's Dictionary, it tells us that superstitions are a belief or way of behaving based on fear of the unknown and belief in magic or luck. Due to my Dutch heritage, superstition has played a prominent role in my life from early childhood to the present. I didn't know that what I might think of as being polite and saying "God bless you" when someone sneezes, is a tradition that comes from superstition. . The first Christians, dating back to 360 BC, believed that if a person sneezed, he got rid of inner evil. When someone sneezes and people say “God bless you” it is a way to ward off evil. The other belief was that when a person sneezed his or her heart stopped beating, and so people said "God bless you" in the hope that he or she would not die. This is a superstition that Christians have passed down, which has now become not only a tradition but a point of education. My Dutch-American heritage teaches that it is bad luck not to bless someone after a hard sneeze. When I was ten, I once broke a mirror and my anguished mother told me I would have seven years of bad luck. When I asked her why she was so distressed, she told me that in the old days people thought that a mirror could hold a part of their soul; that he could be trapped by the Devil, also it could take up to seven years to get his soul back. This superstition was taught by... the center of the paper... no bigger and the top always remained. For me it's the best because, well, you can eat your cake. Friday the 13th is the pinnacle of bad luck, as Friday is an unlucky day dating back to the 14th century and the number thirteen was an unlucky number by every thought. they come from the Last Supper since there were thirteen people at the table. However the two did not unite until around 1869, to form the Trifecta of Misfortune. Over the centuries, superstitions have been passed down and we have been taught to fear the unknown or to cross our fingers for good luck. It is the irrational fear we harbor that causes these superstitions, and it can completely alter the way an otherwise rational person would normally behave. Even today, in modern society, my Dutch heritage clings to these superstitions out of an irrational fear of what might happen without knowing why.