If you grew up in America, your childhood may have been graced by the presence of a magical fairy appearing in the night to steal your baby teeth and leave a sum of money in return. The Tooth Fairy is a staple in many US households. This magical figure first appeared in 1908 in the Chicago Tribune when the author Lillian Brown proposed the fairy as a fun and magical tool for parents to encourage their children to lose their baby teeth. However, the Tooth Fairy was not the first of her kind. For many years before her, other cultures around the world have had their own way of dealing with children’s discarded teeth.
Take France, for example: Similar to America, when a child loses a tooth, they place it under their pillow. But instead of the Tooth Fairy, a mouse named La Petite Souris — French for “The Little Mouse” — appears under the cover of the night, rolling a coin and maneuvering herself under the child’s pillow to exchange the coin for the tooth. And if you have been a good little child, La Petite Souris might even bring a bill instead of a coin.
While this might seem odd to an American, someone from a Spanish-speaking country might not be as surprised. In nations, such as Spain and Mexico, they have their own version of La Petite Souris named Ratoncito Perez. The mouse received this tooth-stealing ability in 1894 when author Luis Coloma was commissioned to write a story for the 8-year-old King of Spain, Alfonso XIII, who had just lost his first baby tooth. Ratoncito Perez lives in Madrid with his family in the shoe box. Each night he scurries through the city pipes to find children who have lost their teeth. Once he locates a child sleeping with a tooth tucked under their pillow, he retrieves the tooth and replaces it with money or a toy.
However, in some cultures, there is no magical critter coming to retrieve your teeth; instead, there are interesting practices that supersede the loss of a baby tooth. In Central Asia when a child loses a tooth, it is wrapped in meat or fat and fed to the family dog. The thought process is that by feeding the tooth to the dog the next tooth that grows in will be strong like a canine. But what do you do if you don’t have a dog? No problem, bury your tooth by a tree in hopes that the adult tooth will have strong roots like those of the plant.
Another tradition in countries such as India, China, Vietnam, and Korea is tossing your teeth in the air or throwing them on the ground. If the tooth comes from your lower jaw you are supposed to toss it in the air or onto the roof and if it’s from the upper jaw, you must throw it on the ground. This is so the next tooth will grow straight toward the old one. Make sure you don’t mess up or you might end up with a crooked smile.