6 Bizarre Superstitions About Christmas Babies

You could say that a Christmas child is truly born under a lucky star. As a poem from 1525 put it, children born on Christmas were pretty much guaranteed a successful life, per Psychics.com. And if your December 25 baby is born on a Sunday, all the better: "a grete lorde he shalle be." In 1878, popular superstition had it that Noel babies could never be drowned or hanged. Then around 1957, things got simplified, and everyone agreed that being born on Christmas would generally be blessed with good luck. (So if you have a Christmas-born relative or friend, have them play your next lottery ticket for you.)

Additionally, babies born on Christmas are traditionally known to be closer to the spirits in some cultures. “In Ireland, birth on Christmas allowed one to see the Little People, and even command spirits,” says Brian Earl, the host of popular podcast Christmas Past and the author of the new book Christmas Past: The Fascinating Stories Behind Our Favorite Holiday's Traditions. “In England, it was lucky: It meant the baby would never be hanged, drowned or troubled by spirits.” How’s that for some luck.

If your Christmas baby is born on a Thursday, better save up that college tuition now. According to that same poem, not only will a Thursday Christmas child do good deeds, they'll also be "of speche and tonge wyse and reasonabylle." Friday babies, on the other hand, will live a long, long life — and a mischievous one that that.

Oh, one more thing about that poem... seems not all Christmas babies were fated to be fortunate. According to the verse, while all the Sunday-through-Friday babies are blessed with wisdom and strength, "Yf Christmas on the Saterday falle... children that e borne that day, Within halfe a yere they shall dye, par fay." Yikes. As if that weren't confusing enough, the Mrs. Daffodil Digresses blog explained that, back in 1921, it was thought that Christmas-born boys would be lucky, while Christmas girls were known as "the sorrow child[ren]."

Having a Christmas birthday in Greece isn't what you'd call a happy event. As the German newspaper Spiegel explained, Greek legend has it that nasty goblins called Kallikantzaroi appear at night between December 25 and the January 6 Epiphany. During that time, they run riot, smash belongings, and generally scare the eggnog out of everyone.

Furthermore, when a baby is born on Christmas, it will turn into a Kallikantzaroi. “The Greeks traditionally believed it was an affront to the Virgin Month and Child, and therefore, children born on Christmas were likely to turn into Kallikantzaroi (monsters from folklore),” Earl says. “To prevent this from happening, parents were obliged to singed the toenails of newborns, lest they turn into claws!” As another way to avoid that unhappy fate, garlic was also tied onto their newborns. It may make for some rather stinky cuddle sessions, but better that than having your kid become a red-eyed, worm-eating hellbeast.

Your Christmas child could be a real-life Dog Whisperer. Or Cat Whisperer, Goat Whisperer, or Lemur Whisperer. The Chest of Books website says that folklore from the Kentucky mountains has it that babies born on Christmas can "understand the speech of animals."

Perhaps related, but definitely not as welcomed, it has also been believed that those with Christmas birthdays might turn into werewolves. “In parts of Poland and Germany, it was feared that being born on Christmas made a child more likely to become a werewolf,” Earl says. “Christmas was believed to be a season of increased demonic powers.”

A number of old wives' tales about Christmas-born babies are related to the jobs they were destined to have. In early 20th-century England, superstition had it that parents of boys born on December 25 should push them to enter the clergy, and girls born that day should become nurses. And in 1890s Silesia, now part of the Czech Republic, it was believed that a Christmas-born boy "must be brought up a lawyer or he shall become a thief." I'm guessing that there were lots of Silesian lawyers celebrating Christmas birthdays back then.