Lucky Socks

General information about item:

Informant Data:

CD is a current Dartmouth College sophomore in the graduating class of 2024. He is originally from Hampton, New Hampshire and currently resides in Hanover, New Hampshire. CD is undecided on a major currently. He runs distance for the Dartmouth Cross Country team.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: Rituals are meant to bring positivity to the individual overall mindset- if that ritual they did before an event or competition allowed them to have a positive performance, they are more likely to repeat that ritual. At the same time, if the individual realizes that their ritual isn’t brining anything positive or negative towards them, they are likely to break away from it. CD explains how his rituals used to be wearing the same pair of lucky socks before a race and having the same prerace meal (whole wheat pasta with chicken sausage and pesto). However, he slowly started to break away from his rituals since he realized regardless of if he did these rituals his performance would be the same.
Social Context: The goal of rituals is to bring comfort for the individual, however if there is a change of mindset, they might associate ritual with a negative connotation. As a result, that individual will might stray away from rituals as a whole or that specific ritual they conducted.

Item:

“I think for pre-race traditions, I had a lot, especially in high school. I kind of broke away from them when I had good races regardless of when I did the traditions or not, but I used to wear the same pair of lucky socks every race. The lucky socks provided me with a feeling of comfort and security before a race in which there is so much I could not be in control of.”

Associate file (a video, audio, or image file):

Collector’s Comments:

This informants lucky pair of socks was very similar to many superstitions I heard from other informants. Lucky clothing seems to be a trend among the track/xc athletes I talked to, and I assume this means athlete across the board take some sense of comfort in “lucky” clothing items.

Collector’s Name: Anna Brause

Tags/Keywords:

Dartmouth Folklore Archive