Question: A longstanding superstition that wearing green brings BAD luck originated with theatrical actors in what country?
Answer: France
It seems like everyone—Irish and non-Irish alike—dons something green on St. Patrick’s Day hoping for a little luck o’ the Irish. But if you happen to be going to the theater in Paris, you can be sure none of the actors will be sporting any green on St. Patrick’s Day—or any other day of the year. Actors are a pretty superstitious lot anyway, but they’re serious about this one. It’s bad luck to wear green while performing on stage—and the superstition is just as strong today as it was when it all began on February 17, 1673.
The show must go on ...
Born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, France’s greatest playwright is better known by his stage name, Molière. More than a playwright, Molière is regarded as one of the greatest French writers of all time. His farces and other works continue to resonate with contemporary audiences. In fact, even to this day Molière is so highly regarded that French is sometimes referred to as “the language of Molière.”
Molière was also a famous actor, and on February 17, 1673, he was performing in his latest play, The Imaginary Invalid, at a theater in Paris. Molière, who had been suffering from tuberculosis for several years, began to cough and gasp halfway through the performance. After a short delay, he insisted the play continue and he managed to make it through the show. A couple of hours later, though, he’d be dead. Molière's costume—the clothing that he died in—was green. And ever since then, actors have clung to the superstition that it is very unlucky to wear green while performing on the stage.
Green avoids the limelight ...
If Molière's example wasn’t enough for actors to avoid wearing green garments, other reasons soon followed. Early in the 19th century, spotlights were invented and widely used in theaters. Because they worked by burning the chemical quicklime, it’s where we get the expression of being in “the limelight.” But true to their nickname, the lights had a greenish glow to them—so if an actor wore green he or she might be less visible when hit by the spotlight.
Another reason to avoid green costumes has to do with the color itself. Most garments are dyed, but green dye was very difficult to make and even when dye was used, the color didn’t hold. So green costumes were painted instead—it was easier but had one drawback. Green paint was extremely toxic. The color looked beautiful, but the pigment was unstable and corrosive. If it made it onto your skin, it could act like a violent poison.
That same toxic green paint created problems for Margaret Hamilton, the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. With her face covered in toxic green makeup she couldn’t eat anything during the entire production process in case of accidental ingestion—just some liquids through a straw.
So, not only is it bad luck for actors to wear green costumes, it can be downright dangerous.
It’s not easy bein’ green ...
So is the wearing of the green lucky or unlucky? Maybe it’s a little of both. There are both unlucky and lucky associations with “green” in common expressions. Unlucky ones include being “green around the gills,” something Charles Dickens came up with. In a letter he wrote in 1843, he described how he was feeling “... red in the nose, green in the gills ... and fractious in the temper from the most intolerable and oppressive cold.” We’ve all been there.
The origin of the idiom “green with envy” is a bit more mysterious. But in a similar vein, Shakespeare first associated the color green with jealousy in Othello, calling it a “green-eyed monster.” Then again, when it comes to the plays of Shakespeare, we’re all a little green with envy, too. The Bard also came up with “green in earth,” which means freshly buried. He coined this rather unlucky green association in Romeo and Juliet in 1599: “Where bloudie Tybalt yet but greene in earth, Lies festring in his shroude.”
It’s not all bad luck for the color green, though. Who wouldn’t want a green thumb? That lucky association first showed up in a Michigan newspaper in 1937, writing how it was “horticultural slang for being a successful gardener with instinctive understanding of growing things.” Or how about greenbacks? That affectionate name for U.S. money started during the Civil War, when Captain James Wren wrote in his diary that he was ready for the paymaster “to hand over green backs, which is much needed.” (Wow, back then, too?!)
And finally, someone who’s lucky enough to reach a “green old age,” was popularized in The Vicar of Wakefield, a 1766 novel by Oliver Goldsmith: “His green old age seemed to be the result of health and benevolence.”
The wearin’ o’ the ... blue?
Like the verdant landscapes of the Emerald Isle, the color green is practically synonymous with St. Patrick’s Day. But it wasn’t always that way. The national color of Ireland used to be royal blue. Early Irish flags were blue, and St. Patrick himself was always depicted sporting blue garments. For much of their history, Irish people didn’t just consider the color green unlucky, they feared it.
Green had always been associated with fever and death in Ireland, which was likely exacerbated by the Irish potato famine when more than a million people died of starvation between 1845 and 1852. Because people sometimes took on a green pallor before succumbing, it only added to their anxiety. Others in Ireland avoided green because they believed supernatural fairy people (those green-suited leprechauns) hated to see humans wear their colors.
You can blame the English for what happened next. They were the ones who designated blue as Ireland’s national color—slapping it on everything from early Irish flags to a coat of arms to a new order of chivalry whose official color was “St. Patrick’s blue.” The ever-rebellious Irish no longer wanted anything to do with blue (or the British for that matter). Wanting a different hue to symbolize their country, they seized upon green, the color of the shamrock. Stemming from a legend that St. Patrick used a green shamrock to explain the holy trinity to the Irish, green replaced blue as the symbol of Ireland, and became a part of its national flag in 1848. And when droves Irish immigrants arrived in America throughout the 19th century, they brought with them the tradition of wearing green on the feast day that celebrates St. Patrick.
It didn’t take long for the wearing of the green to become a prominent feature of the boisterous St. Patrick’s Day parades that took place in many U.S. cities. It got so widespread that on St. Patrick’s Day in 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt, despite his Dutch ancestry, proudly sported a green carnation and criticized a senator for not wearing any green.
Ten more lucky facts about St. Patrick’s Day
· Maybe all the snakes were on planes—That story about St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland is likely just that—a story. The fossil record indicates that Ireland has never been home to any snakes. Through the Ice Age, the island was too cold to host any reptiles, and since then the surrounding seas would have staved off any serpentine invaders. And you probably already know that St. Patrick wasn’t Irish—he was born to Roman parents in Scotland or Wales in the late fourth century.
· So, no birthday cake then?—We celebrate St. Patrick’s Day on March 17—but that isn’t the anniversary of his birth. It actually marks the date he died: March 17, 461 A.D.
· Don’t blink or you’ll miss it—Some cities go all out on St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, but not the Irish village of Dripsey. From 1999 to 2007, they proudly boasted of hosting the shortest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the world—a route that ran for 25 yards between two pubs. Since then, the record has been surpassed by Hot Springs, Arkansas, whose parade route stretches a mere 98 feet.
· When Irish eyes weren’t smiling—Up until the 1970s, St. Patrick’s Day was a dry holiday in Ireland. All pubs were closed (with the sole exception of beer vendors at the national dog show held on the same day). Back then, the saint’s feast day was considered a more solemn, religious occasion. What were they thinking?! Ireland now welcomes hordes of green-clad tourists for parades, Guinness, and more Guinness ...
· The Big Green Apple—One of the world’s largest St. Patrick’s Day parades is in New York City. Some 250,000 participants have been slowly walking up 5th Avenue by foot since 1762. The parade is big on tradition, too, not allowing floats, cars, or any other modern trappings along the route. It was canceled for the first time in its centuries-old history in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
· A green river runs through it—Chicago has been celebrating St. Patrick by dumping green dye into the Chicago River since 1962. While organizers have kept the exact formula a secret, what we do know is that the powder that is used is dispersed through flour sifters by the local plumbers’ union.
· What’s your beef?—In case you’re wondering, that tasty St. Patrick’s Day staple for Irish Americans, corned beef and cabbage, has nothing to do with those yellow kernels of corn. Instead, it refers to large grains of salt that were historically used to cure meats, which were called “corns.”
· I’m tapped—who’s got the next round?—St. Patrick’s Day is the biggest day for bar sales in the United States. In 2024, it is estimated that Americans spent $7.2 billion celebrating the holiday. In 2017, some 13 million pints of Guinness were consumed worldwide.
· Happy St. Maewyn’s Day!—St. Patrick’s birth name was Maewyn Succat. He later changed it to Patrick (actually, to Patricus, which is Latin for “nobleman” or “father figure”).
· So how did they reproduce?—In traditional Irish folk tales, there are no female leprechauns, just nattily dressed little guys who spend their days making shoes and guarding their gold.
Have a great St. Patrick’s Day. Wear some green, enjoy a Guinness, and listen to some Irish music. Or if you can’t find any, put on some Green Day ...
Unless you’re on stage, feel free to wear green during Grand Circle’s Cruising the Rhone: Lyon to Provence & the South of France River Cruise.
