National Blame Someone Else Day is sort of a strange holiday. It’s always observed on the first Friday the 13th of the year and it encourages people to not take any responsibility for their actions whatsoever. It’s a day during which people chalk their misfortunes up to bad luck and then allow them to shift their blame to someone, anyone, else.

Now, that doesn’t sound very responsible to us, but we’ll go ahead and roll with the tongue-in-cheek nature of this holiday. As long as it involves only trivial problems and no one suffers any real consequences, then we’ll just write it up as good fun.

The History Of National Blame Someone Else Day

This holiday was created by Anne Moeller of Clio, Michigan in 1982. According to her story, she invented this holiday when her alarm clock failed to go off one day and this one event led to a chain reaction of bad luck all throughout the day.

Because that day happened to be Friday the 13th, this holiday was celebrated on that date every year. And that, my friends, is how National Blame Someone Else Day began.

Some Facts About Bad Luck

Since the whole basis of this holiday is that bad luck robs a person of their agency, then we thought that we’d examine bad luck in a little more detail. After all, if bad luck is really responsible for all of the bad things in our life, then maybe the solution is to learn more about it. With that being said, below are some facts about bad luck that we think people might be interested in knowing about. Let’s look at them.

• Mixing beers in the Czech Republic is bad luck.
• In some Latin American cultures, it’s unlucky to be married on a Tuesday.
• In some parts of Europe, a sailor should never light a cigarette from a candle. It’s bad luck.
• In Sweden, it’s bad luck to place your keys on a table.
• In some German Pennsylvanian communities, a female visitor on New Year’s is bad luck.
• In Serbia, it’s lucky to call a baby ugly. It’s unlucky to say that they’re cute.

Observing National Blame Someone Else Day

On this day, everyone can just chalk up their failings for the day to bad luck. Your car fails to start, you forget your work gloves, or you didn’t pick up milk from the grocery store? Don’t worry, it’s just bad luck.

Did you forget to put down the toilet seat, didn’t leave the pizza delivery driver a tip, or forget to mail out a birthday card? Bad luck. And while you’re taking no responsibility for your actions on this day, be sure to use the hashtag #BlameSomeoneElseDay on social media to spread the word about it online.