Why Do People Pull The Wishbone?

The collarbone of a chicken or turkey is traditionally removed from the bird and left to dry out in the sun. It has a 'V' shape, which means that it can be held by two people at once, with one to each end.

The 'wishbone' is gripped by the pinkie finger of each person, who then both pull in the opposite direction.

When the bone snaps, the winner is the one who ends up with the largest piece of bone. The winner must close his eyes and make a wish.

This wish must never be spoken out loud and must remain a secret or else it will never come true.

The name 'wishbone' is believed to have come from the ancient Romans who removed the birds entrails and read the future in them, meanwhile they laid the collarbone out to dry in the sun and people seeking special knowledge from the gods made a wish upon this bone.

Another reason that it is believed that people started thinking the wishbone lucky was because people were sure that hens and cocks were fortune tellers in spirit, since they were able to foretell the break of the day.

Although often thought of as an American tradition, breaking the wishbone from a turkey was actually brought to the new world by the Pilgrims from England.  The importance of the wishbone can be traced back to the Romans who ate fowl such as guinea fowl and chicken.

Hens and cocks were thought to be oracles or fortune tellers.  The Romans adopted this belief from the Etruscans, who settled one of the earliest civilizations on the Italian peninsula around 800-900 BC.  The Romans would have been responsible for spreading the superstition through the early western world.

When the Etruscans killed a bird, it’s collarbone would be laid out to dry in the sun.  They would then pick up the bone and stroke it and make a wish.  This is where the name ‘wishbone’ came from and it seems that wishing on bird’s clavicles was a common practice for a few centuries. 

The wishbone or furcula is also called the ‘Merrythought’ a term that dates back to at least 1686 when the custom of two people taking hold of either side of the bone and pulling until it breaks was first recorded.

You need two people to do this. When you pull a wishbone, it never breaks down the middle so whoever gets the bigger half gets to make a wish.