The story of the tooth fairy

Do you sometimes dream that all your teeth are crumbling and falling out? This is a dream that always leaves a strong impression long after you’ve woken up and found with huge relief that your teeth are still solidly rooted in your jaw. Whatever the causes of this dream, it is clear that losing teeth is a very real fear.

 

Of course, around about the age of six, children do begin to lose their teeth. The 20 milk teeth are gradually pushed out and replaced by the 28 permanent teeth. But what could otherwise be a time of worry for children is turned into one of wonder and excitement by the potential arrival of the tooth fairy.

 

The tradition of the tooth fairy visiting in the middle of the night to exchange a child’s tooth, hidden under the pillow on the day it falls out, for money, dates from around the beginning of the 20th century. The custom seems to have originated in the United States and spread around the English-speaking world from there. It is, however, based upon older traditions from around Europe.

 

As Europeans migrated to America, their traditions were taken with them and over time mutated into today's legends. Today, rather than a tooth fairy, in many European countries such as France, Italy and Spain, it is the tooth mouse who exchanges a child’s tooth for a gift. That an animal whose teeth never stop growing during its life should be regarded as good luck in dental traditions is not really surprising.

 

There is no firm rule for the amount of money to be left by the tooth fairy, although a coin seems more usual than a note. Obviously, the better condition the teeth are in, the more they are worth to the fairy, so it is important for children to take good care of their teeth with regular brushing. While a child might question what the tooth fairy does with all those teeth, they rarely seem to be concerned about how the tooth fairy manages to carry all that money.

 

Perhaps she gives the teeth to all the new babies? Or throws them up into the sky where they become stars? Maybe the entire tooth fairy kingdom is built using the milk teeth of millions of children from around the world? In the end, many children begin to believe that the tooth fairy, being the most successful of fairies, is in fact their parents.