Brooks's Rabbitings

Please help me find other materials on this "Rabbit" habit. My family has always competed to be the first to say "Rabbit" each month, but we don't know why. Are there references?

- Brooks on 12/31/2000

Well, we knew that the first to say a single "rabbit" was to get good luck for the rest of the month. We added that saying "rabbit" on the first day of the first month of the year was better still. It never had to be the first thing out of our mouths -- it was the first family member to say it to someone else.

We got it from our father (age 78), who is from Fairhaven, Massachusetts, but now lives in Hilton Head, South Carolina. In our family it began long before we could remember, and we're baby boomers. All of us children do it monthly: I'm in Pennsylvania (where I've spread it to my elementary school students); the rest are in California, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.

- Brooks on 1/1/2001