Breaking a glass
Breaking a glass was an ill omen during a toast in Norway, while Germans smashed crockery on purpose before weddings. Glass most often breaks from a sudden change in heat, which raises the matter of the shocks you put yourself through.
What it may mean
A glass can survive years of knocks and then split in an instant under a stream of hot water. Glass does not mind heat or cold nearly as much as it minds a sudden difference between them: one side expands while the other has not caught up, and the strain finds the weakest point. That kind of break says little about how strong the glass was and a lot about how fast conditions changed. It is a good lens for your own weeks. Going straight from a vacation into a crisis at work, from a tense meeting into a family dinner, from silence into noise, can crack something that would have handled either state alone. A little time to adjust in between, the equivalent of warming the glass first, might be the whole lesson here.
Depending on how you saw it
A glass that cracks under hot water
Pouring boiling water into a chilled glass, or setting a just-washed glass on an icy counter, is the classic way to crack it. The material was fine; the jump was too big. Where could you give yourself a slower transition between two very different stretches of your schedule?
A glass that breaks during a toast
Glasses clinked too hard at a party sometimes chip or crack, usually at the thin rim. A celebration has its own small risks. Is there a happy event coming up where a little less force and a little more care would help?
A car window shattered into cubes
Car side windows are made of tempered glass, designed to burst into small, blunt cubes instead of long, sharp shards. It is built to fail safely. If something in your life were to break, have you arranged things so that it would break gently?
A glass that falls and does not break
A dropped glass may bounce on a rug or land flat and survive, while the same drop onto an edge would shatter it. How it lands matters more than how far it falls. What kind of landing have you prepared for the next time something drops?
Why it happens in nature
Glass breaks most easily when struck on an edge or an old chip, and from thermal shock, when one part heats or cools much faster than another, as when hot water hits a cold glass. Tempered glass, used in car side windows and shower doors, is made to burst into small, blunt cubes. Sweeping and then dabbing the floor with a damp paper towel picks up the tiniest pieces.
What folk beliefs say
Germany
In Germany, old crockery was thrown and smashed in front of the house door on the eve of a wedding; the more that broke that night, the more fortune the couple could expect. The evening was called Polterabend, from poltern, to make a racket.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 1 (1903), vol. 1, p. 112. View the page
Norway
In Norway, if a drinking mug of wood or glass broke while someone's health was being drunk, it was considered very unlucky for the person being toasted.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 1 (1903), vol. 1, p. 414. View the page
Austria
In Austria it was thought very unlucky to throw broken crockery at anybody in anger.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 1 (1903), vol. 1, p. 436. View the page
To reflect on
Where do you jump between two very different states with no time in between?