When you speak of good or bad luck, many people knock on wood to ward off misfortune or preserve good fortune. While popular folklore attributes this to ancient Celtic beliefs in wood spirits, the practice most likely evolved from a 19th-century British children's game called 'tiggy touchwood,' where touching wood made players safe from being tagged.
Why Do We Knock on Wood? The Surprising Origin
Next time you knock on wood after mentioning your good health or upcoming vacation, you're probably participating in a superstition that has nothing to do with ancient druids or mystical tree spirits—despite what you might have heard.
The Celtic Myth That Won't Die
The romantic explanation goes like this: ancient Celts and Germanic peoples believed sacred trees—especially oak, ash, and hazel—housed protective spirits or minor gods. Knocking on tree trunks would rouse these spirits to grant protection or give thanks for good fortune. It's a compelling story that's been repeated in countless articles and casual conversations.
There's just one problem: there's virtually no evidence for it. British folklorist Steve Roud calls the claim "complete nonsense," and the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore found no trace of the custom before the 1800s, dismissing tree spirit theories as romantic inventions.
The Thousand-Year Silence
If knocking on wood really descended from pre-Christian tree worship, we'd expect to find some mention of it in the intervening centuries. Yet there's a conspicuous gap of more than a thousand years between the Christianization of Europe and the first written references to the superstition.
The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest record of "knock on wood" appears in 1907. The British version "touch wood" shows up slightly earlier in 1898. That's suspiciously recent for a supposedly ancient tradition.
A Game Children Played
The actual origin is far less mystical. The earliest known reference comes from R. Anderson's Ballads in the Cumberland Dialect (1805), which describes a children's chasing game. In games like "tiggy touchwood"—a variation of tag—players were safe from being caught as long as they touched something wooden.
Folklorist Steve Roud argues this children's game is "almost certainly the origin of our modern superstitious practice." The game was well known to both adults and children, and its connection to "protection" mirrors exactly how we use the gesture today.
From Playground to Parlor
Superstitions often evolve from playful practices into genuine beliefs. What started as a rule in children's games—wood provides safety—gradually transformed into an adult superstition about warding off bad luck. By the late 19th century, touching wood had become a common folk belief throughout Britain and eventually spread to America as "knock on wood."
So the next time someone confidently explains the "ancient Celtic origins" of knocking on wood, you can knock on the nearest table and correct them. Just don't expect the wood spirits to back you up—they were never there to begin with.