Strange and Common Customs

Reference librarians enjoy getting certain categories of questions (despite a commitment to giving equal weight to each question) versus other categories that make them unobtrusively grit their teeth. I suspect that questions about peculiar customs that we take for granted would rank high on the favorite list. Certainly these questions about the origins of simple or mysterious customs accounted for a fair percentage of questions that ended up in the files of "The Exchange" over the years. Unlike requests for obscure poems that only the patron's grandmother remembered, or attempts to track mysterious sayings through quotation dictionary after quotation dictionary, the origins of interesting customs can be fascinating. If nothing else, they may improve librarians' chances on Jeopardy. For that reason, the Strange and Common Customs category opens the list of questions received from and answered by readers of "The Exchange."