Family tradition holds that my red-headed Great Aunt Dorothy is a witch. Among her many talents is a sure-fire way to sell a house: bury a statue of St. Joseph in the front yard.When Ted and I put our condo on the rental market last fall, we buried a St. Joseph statue in one of the flower pots on our deck. It might go against tradition a bit, but we were three stories up and it was the best we could do. It worked, and we did get the condo rented out during an otherwise bad time of the year.
When we moved, we took the St. Joseph statue with us and buried it in my mom's front yard, because we're now trying to sell her house. Is it wrong to have a St. Joseph statue do double duty? Should we have purchased a new one for the task? Our intent is to bring the St. Joseph statue to The Box House when Mom's house sells, and put him in a place of honor in the entryway. But her house has been on the market a few months now, and I worry that maybe the magic only works once. I haven't brought up the metaphysical details of this problem with Aunt Dorothy yet.
Burying religious figures in the yard in order to sell a house seems to be a fairly common phenomenon. For good measure, I also buried a dashboard Buddy Christ that I gave to Ted a few years ago. The statuette always makes me feel good, winking and giving me the thumbs up sign. (If you aren't familiar with Buddy Christ, he is from the 2001 movie Dogma.)I'd be curious to know what particular rituals others may have used to help sell a house. While we're not desperate to sell, trekking back and forth between the houses does get tiresome.
External Resources:
St. Joseph Statue
Buddy Christ Statue
St. Joseph: My Real Estate Agent
1 comment:
From an e-mail we received from my Aunt S. this evening:
St Joseph traditions: Went to a Catholic supply store when selling the house on 48th Avenue...asked for the smallest statue, to which the owner said "Have a house on the market, do ya?" Sold the house that week. Buried the same statue in a pot at the condo on 6th Drive...sold it within 2 weeks. Buried the same statue in the backyard of the house on Altadena...sold it for double the price 2 yrs earlier...but for the life of me, could never find the stick I put on top of his spot that time, so he lives there permanently! In between, he was on display indoors. The tradition comes from His Leading His Family or something like that. Thanks for inducing the memory!!!
If only we had that kind of luck for my mom's house!
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