Hat on the bed
Many households treat a hat on the bed as an ill omen and snatch it off the covers at once. Yet in Scotland, fathers once hung their hats on the bedpost during a birth, as if a hat could stand guard in their place.
What it may mean
A hat holds the shape of one head, and a familiar hat can tell you who is in the room before you see a face. Perhaps that is why old customs treated it as a stand-in for its owner. In Scotland, a father was supposed to hang his hat on the bedpost while a child was being born, to keep away dark spirits, as if the hat could guard the bed when he could not. In Bohemia, people warned that a hat on the bed would cost you your sleep. Either way, the hat brings its owner into the room. The custom is a fair cue to ask what of yours keeps a place for you when you are absent: a coat on a chair, a mug at a friend's house, a promise someone still counts on. Families keep the rule for practical or superstitious reasons, and many grown children still wince at a hat lying on the covers.
Depending on how you saw it
A guest tossing their hat on your bed
At parties, coats and hats often pile up on a bed, and someone may rush to move the hats. Family rules surface fastest when guests break them without knowing. Which of your household rules do you only discover when someone new arrives?
A partner's cap tossed on the bed
A cap tossed on the bed by someone you live with can be annoying, and it is also a small sign that they are home. Things left lying around are how a household knows who is in. Which small traces of the people you live with would you miss if they stopped appearing?
A hat on a hotel bed
In a hotel, the bed is often the only big surface, so luggage, coats and hats all land there. The rule follows some people even on vacation. Which habits from home travel with you whether or not they fit the place?
Why it happens in nature
Hats collect sweat, skin oils, dust and outdoor dirt, and they are often set down on any free surface. Keeping them off beds and pillows is plain hygiene, and in earlier times, when hats were worn every day and washed rarely, the reasons were stronger. Rules like this survive as family habits long after their first reason is forgotten.
What folk beliefs say
Bohemia
In Bohemia, people warned that if you put a hat on the bed, you would lose your sleep.
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. 410. View the page
Scotland
In Scotland, to keep away dark spirits while a child was being born, the father was supposed to hang his hat on the bedpost.
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. 8. View the page
To reflect on
What of yours keeps a place for you in a room, or in someone's life, when you are not there?