By E.S. Muñoz
I have a niece who is pregnant and lives in the full path of the highly anticipated total solar eclipse occurring on Monday.
While all of North America and Central America will experience a partial solar eclipse, only those within the path of totality – an approximately 115-mile (185-kilometer) wide route through Mexico, 15 U.S. States, and Canada – will be able to see the moon entirely covering the sun’s disk.
My niece lives in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, which means she will have a full view of the solar eclipse and her mother, my sister, told her as it arrives to protect herself by wearing a safety pin. In fact, my mother advised her to take it even a step further, telling her to wear all her metal keys around her neck.
When I asked why, my sister’s response was, “Just playing it safe. … What harm can it do?”
As a person who believes in facts and science, I went on to ask my family why they would perpetuate a myth, or a superstition and continue passing down bad information.
According to scientists, there is no relationship between health or birth defects and eclipses.
I have heard about this practice for as long as I can remember and it did make us wonder where it originated.
It turns out that fear of eclipses is common in most if not all ancient cultures. Specifically with a solar eclipse, when day becomes night even for a short time can be frightening. Fear-based beliefs could have been exacerbated if the ancient people naturally peering up at the sky during an eclipse suffered eye damage afterward.
For the Aztecs, there were many different concepts of what eclipses were and what they could foretell.
According to the book “Eclipses in the Aztec Codices” – referring to the Codex Vaticanus – the Aztecs thought that a jaguar was going to eat the sun. This idea translated and evolved into the Mexican superstition that if a pregnant woman viewed an eclipse, a bite would be taken out of her unborn child’s face. Today, that belief has evolved to taking precautions out of concern for a baby who might be born with a cleft palate.
In the past people used to make as much noise as possible to frighten away the monster to let the sun go. Today superstitions and fear linger, and wearing a safety pin (traditionally, a woman might have held a knife close to her belly) and red underwear to offer protection from a cleft palate and any other potential birth defects.
The practice of wearing red underwear is also thought to date back to Aztec times when pregnant women would carry a red string around an arrowhead.
On Monday, April 8, I doubt that most women adhering to these beliefs, traditional or whatever you want to call them, will even know where they originated. Nor probably do they care. I suspect like my sister and mother, their intentions are only good. They will take advice from their elder women folk, as is also a tradition in Latin American culture, and take an additional step to secure their babies’ wellbeing.
Whatever your beliefs, if you would recommend your pregnant family member wear a safety pin or not, is up to you.
I only ask, kindly, to show respect to those with beliefs and traditions still tied to our ancient past.