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Today I heard on As It Happens of a tradition that I had never heard of: on the first day of a new month, it is good luck to say, before anything else, 'White Rabbit'. While I had never heard of such a thing, evidently it is widespread enough for a number of callers to ring in and exclaim, that yes, as children they would start the first of the month saying 'white rabbit' or 'rabbit rabbit rabbit' although it was a rare enough occurrence for most of them to say that they had always believed that it was just their own little private childhood game. (Don't believe me? Here is someone on the web mentioning the phenomenon. And it's in a book, too) We know of the Man in the Moon (and no, it's not Andy Kaufman) but many don't know many in the world see a rabbit in the moon. Just as the Maya did and as the Japanese do ("Sailor Moon's Japanese name - Tsukino Usagi - means "rabbit of the moon" specifically referring to an Asian legend of a rabbit on the moon pounding the mochi (a rice cake)"). And sometimes the Man in the Moon dukes it out with the rabbit. One caller explained that the practice comes from pagan times in which it was customary to thank the god of the new moon by invoking his name, 'Black Rabbit' and, on the next day, to invoke the name of the 'White Rabbit'. And so, even though we now measure time by months as opposed to moons, there are still some people who are trying to appease the Rabbit in the Moon. (btw, here's another
pagan tradition
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