Italian SUPERSTITIONS Explained | From the 'Evil Eye' to Air Conditioning

One of the most interesting benefits of marrying someone from a different country is having the chance to immerse yourself in a foreign culture—including their crazy superstitions! Italians have a lot of fun superstitions (Eva considers them SCIENTIFIC FACT) so we sat down to discuss some of my favorites.

Get ready to learn everything from how your personal grooming habits are making you sick, to techniques for warding off the dreaded "Evil Eye." Grab a good luck charm and enjoy the show!

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00:00 - Italian Superstitions
01:30 - Good Luck Charms
06:09 - Wet Hair
08:33 - Bare Feet
09:59 - Air Conditioning
12:34 - Colpo D'Aria
15:27 - Spilling Olive Oil
17:08 - Spilling Wine
18:29 - Kissing Bread
21:25 - The Number 17
24:14 - All the Single Ladies
26:02 - Malocchio: The Evil Eye
29:22 - Pasta Grammarian in Action!

#superstitions #evileye #malocchio

[PastaGrammar]

Got any fun superstitions—er, "LIFE HACKS"—to share?

[Deivid_C]

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.

[blueswan]

I love the way Harper plays along with Eva's that is a man that understands the importance of having a peaceful home

[kimmieRH]

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. ❤

[brockreynolds]

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.

[Yutaka.M]

This conversation between you two was a great show for me.

[frostysnoman]

I love these videos on Italian culture as much as I love the cooking videos. I hope to see more.

[AngryArchaeologist]

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.

[EarthGirlzTV]

These are all wonderful! My family is from Argentina, but my dad's grandparents were from Italy. A large number of Italians immigrated to Argentina in the 1800s, and incredibly, these customs and superstitions are a part of the Argentinean culture. My mother did not have italian relatives, however, she believed in "mal de ojo" and actually would cure it, and was so good at it. I'd call her up and say, "Ma, cortame!" which means, "Mom, cut me!" It was basically a short way to say, cut my stinkeye. My aunt did this as well, however, she had Albanian-Italian parents. My dad called my aunt "bruja" and she would laugh. She also cured colic in the most bizarre way--pulling the skin on the spine while saying some incantation. My aunt taught me the incantation for mal de ojo, and it could only be learned at midnight Christmas eve or Easter. It was an oral teaching. I always loved the no barefeet superstition, and the "wind." My mom would say, "abrigate!" Which means, bundle up. They used sulfur sticks on the back when you had "aire" or air on the neck or some other area, usually because of wind or air conditioning. The stick would break when the air would leave your body. I actually have sulfur sticks and use them whenever my 69 degree home causes me to have neck or back pain, and I actually think it works. So many of these cultural beliefs, they are so much fun. I recently became obsessed with finding out more about my dad's grandparents and found that I have long-lost relatives in four wonderful places in Cosenza (San Lucido, San Fili, Fiumefreddo Bruzio, and Falconara Albanese) dating back to the early 1700s. Can't wait to visit Calabria in the next few years. This video was so much fun to watch.

[inezrosario]

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. 😅

[katiebrown]

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! 🤣

[VideaVice]

The DaVinci code is as historically relevant and accurate as Abraham Lincoln's Vampire Hunting career.

[paulaheady]

My father-in-law kept a small potato in his jacket pocket to ward off the bad fron windy Chicago days. He lived a long life, well into his 90s and a new small potato every day! He was never sick, and cheerful always.

[dianemiller]

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. 😃

[-MacCat-]

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.

[aris]

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.

[phaulsgawds]

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.

[qtcore]

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"....

[jelsner]

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!"

[John_P._Buryiak]

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.