How This Common Phenomenon Ruined The Tooth Fairy
Christians, have you ever wondered about origins of the Tooth Fairy? Let’s break it down really quick before you freak out and assume you’re involved in paganism.
A BAD TOOTH IS A DEADLY TOOTH
Prior to the advent of modern medicine, if you had a bad tooth, it was a death sentence. Even today, if you ignore a toothache, you can potentially die as bacteria from an abscessed tooth reaches the brain. (Source)
DO YOU ENJOY THE DENTIST?
How many people do you know who enjoy going to to the dentist? If you’ve followed me on the main Crack Your Bible page or the Community Tab on YouTube, you know that all month I’ve harped on Christians to utilize modern healthcare so that they don’t die early of preventable diseases.
FEAR OF PAIN
It is shocking how many adults would rather die of a preventable disease than go to the doctor because of a serious spirit of fear.
Obviously, many little kids are afraid of pain, but again, a bad tooth that stays in will kill them.
In comes the “tooth fee.” All kids like rewards. Today we offer them treats, stickers, trips to the movies or a new toy if they do some sort of task that the adult wants them to do.
ANCIENT REWARDS
Nagesh Badu
Treats, stickers, movies, and ready-made toys didn’t exist for much of human history, but money has always existed.
Kids, when told that they’d be paid a “tooth fee” as a reward, are more apt to let an adult pull their tooth. Yes, the Norse called it the “tand-fé” or “tooth fee.”
FALSE FRIEND COGNATES
In ancient Norse, “fe” meant “fee.” Not “fairy,” but “fee.” This is not the case in other European languages.
In linguistics, false friends (cognates) are words in different languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning.
For example, in Spanish, “tunas” are prickly pear fruits. In English “tunas” are a fish. In Spanish, “actual” means “present day.” In English, “actual” means “existing as fact.”
These words sound the same and look the same but have completely different meanings in their respective languages.
PEOPLE DON’T CHANGE
“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” — Ecclesiastes 1:9
People make assumptions.
If an older person hears about a practice in another country, but in their language “fe” sounds like their language’s word for “fairy,” what do you think they’ll start calling the practice? People will probably start calling it “fairy,” especially if they’re older.
Think about your own parents and grandparents. How many times do they hear about something on the news and get the information totally mixed up?
What about If a business name changes, how often do they call it by whatever name they’re most familiar with? In the US, Skaggs brand grocery stores went defunct in 1979 — nearly a decade before I was born. To this day, my dad will sometimes call a grocery store “Skaggs.”
Older people have a harder time remembering certain facts. It’s not a slight against them, it’s just a fact of life.
OLD WIVES TALES
In general, kids love stories and women (especially moms and grandmas) love cutesy stuff.
Women also tend to be extremely superstitious. They’re called “Old Wives Tales” rather than “Old Husband Tales” for a reason!
Generally, women fall for a lot of nonsense (mlms, chain letters, and the New Age are all more popular with women.)
“Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly.” — 1 Timothy 4:7
MARKETING
Which sounds like something you could market to kids and women?
- Tooth Fee
- Tooth Fairy
It’s a lot easier to bribe / reward a kid for allowing an adult to pull their rotten tooth if you can tell them a cutesy story about how a pretty fairy will reward them if that tooth comes out.
You can get more women to spread your marketing if you add some nonsense story about luck to whatever you’re peddling.
Word of mouth marketing is the best marketing, and women are susceptible to it the most because they tend to be the ones who have time to chat with other women while tending kids.
“But refuse to enroll younger widows, for when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith. Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not.” — 1 Timothy 5:11–13
There are a lot less marketing opportunities and opportunities to embellish “please let that man take out your tooth (without any modern painkillers.) If you do, I’ll give you money.”
(“Tooth fee” sounds like something a no-nonsense dad would come up with.)
CONCLUSION
What was once a simple bribe to get a scared child to comply with a dentist, turned into a story about a fairy, as this method of getting your child to comply with a parent’s request travelled across Europe.
Parents aren’t burning teeth, selling teeth to be made into talismans, offering them to the sky, etc. Just because other cultures do weird things with teeth doesn’t mean any and all actions around teeth are pagan.
The tooth “fe” isn’t pagan worship. There is nothing inherently unbiblical about telling fictional stories to kids. If you want to call it the “tooth fee” instead of the “tooth fairy,” have at it.
