August brings grief

This post probably should have come out yesterday, but I couldn’t risk that much bad luck all at one time so I waited a day. What kind of bad luck? Friday the 13th of August is considered the unluckiest day of the year in Brazil. We all know about Friday the 13th, but Brazilians actually consider the entire month of August to be bad luck.

First a false cognate: August in Portuguese is agosto. A little play on that word gets us to desgosto, which looks like “disgust” but actually means “grief.” (“Disgust” in Portuguese is nojo.) This leads to a common rhyme in Brazil this time of year: agosto é o mês do desgosto (“August is the month of grief”). August is also called the mês do cachorro louco (“month of the mad dog”) and the mês sem fim (“month without end”).

Of course one could identify a series of bad things in any month, but there does seem to be something particularly inauspicious about August. Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas committed suicide while still in office on August 24, 1954. One of his successors, Juscelino Kubitschek (president from 1956-1961) died in a car accident in August of 1976. Another president, Jânio Quadros, resigned on August 25, 1961, starting a chain of events that led to a two-decade military dictatorship. One of Brazil’s greatest movie directors, Glauber Rocha, died at the age of 42 on August 22, 1981. Carmen Miranda died on August 5, 1955. Brazilians also point to international events that happened in August: the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Nixon’s resignation, the Soviet invasion that ended the Prague Spring, even the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Princess Diana.

The reason for this belief is shrouded in the depths of time. According to Claudia magazine, the superstition gained strength during the Portuguese age of exploration:

Originally, the expression was “casar em agosto traz desgosto” [“marrying in August brings grief”], because the caravels usually took off for the New World around that time. So anyone who got married in August ended up not even having a honeymoon and the brides ran the risk of becoming widows even before they could enjoy the first phase of marriage.

And specifically about Fridays during this month, Blima Bracher says:

Popular folklore says that Fridays in the month of August are prone to visits from werewolves, who during the night have to traverse seven farms, seven crossroads, and seven henhouses. It’s also on Fridays in August that witches are supposed to have to fulfill their fates: flying on a broom in shining garments, spreading cackles and fear through the air. For the most superstitious, the month offers yet one more negative point: according to popular beliefs, on August 24, St. Bartholomew’s Day, the devil can fool the vigilance of the archangels and walk among humans. Good god!