The loss of one’s first baby tooth has been universally recognized as a rite of passage for millennia—well before the Tooth Fairy began leaving coins beneath the pillows of children young enough to believe in Santa Claus. And compared to the long tradition of Saint Nick, the Tooth Fairy’s roots only reach the late Nineteenth Century.
Teeth are symbolic for strength, beauty, vitality, potency, and wisdom and are often considered magical, as Theodore Ziolkowski notes.[1] Citing ancient and modern myths and practices, including Cadmus’s sowing a plain with dragon teeth to cultivate a race of warriors and James Frazer’s account of an African tribe that kills their ruler if he loses a tooth — Ziolkowski writes, “Because of the virtue inherent in teeth, they must not be allowed to fall into the hands of one’s enemies; extracted teeth should be buried or hidden, a superstition still evident in the practice of mothers who carefully save their children’s baby teeth.”[2]
Ceremonial disposal of teeth has taken many forms, as B.R. Townend outlines.[3] These rituals include throwing the tooth (into the sun, fire, between the legs or on a roof), hiding the tooth (in a tree, wall, or in the ground), offering the tooth to an animal (such as a rodent or crow), or swallowing the tooth (by the mother or child). The form of the disposal depends on a culture’s beliefs, as science writer/researcher Rosemary Wells explains, but that the ritual is usually accompanied by an incantation, which is “an audible plea for help to get a new and better tooth to replace the lost one…”[4]. For example, by offering one’s tooth to a rat, a popular tradition in much of Europe and Latin America, one hopes their new tooth will be as strong as the ever-growing rat’s tooth, which Michael Hingston explains is “a wish for transference anthropologists call ‘sympathetic magic.’”[5] But if looking for a direct link to the American Tooth Fairy, things are more complicated.
While the tradition of exchanging teeth for money dates back to the medieval Norse “tooth fee,” these other traditions of exchange are not quite like the American Tooth Fairy. In many medieval traditions, teeth were placed aside sleeping children to protect them from malevolent pixies and water spirits, such as “Jenny Greenteeth.”[6] In Italy, it is not a fairy but the toothless witch Befana (and the Venetian Marantega) who gives children presents during Christmas and coins for their lost teeth, perhaps in hopes of filling her own smile.[7] The British custom of giving “Fairy Coins” to sleeping servant girls doesn’t involve teeth, but it does include a fairy that exchanges hard work for money.
Most researchers locate the Tooth Fairy’s origin in France and cite La Bonne Petite Souris as the possible inspiration. In this folktale, a queen escapes from a bad king with the help of a fairy disguised as a mouse. The small mouse knocks out the king’s teeth and puts them under his pillow until having him assassinated—a tale that perhaps resonates more with the tribe described by Frazer than America’s beloved Tooth Fairy, but coupled with the long Irish and British traditions of benevolent fairies, the American Tooth fairy evolved into her own.
Though referenced in literature much earlier, the American Tooth Fairy didn’t gain traction until the late 1940s, when post-war prosperity gave families the ability to focus on their children.[8] This was also a time children were raised on Disney movies with characters like The Blue Fairy and Tinker Bell. Finally, in 1979, the Tooth Fairy fluttered into the pages of the World Book Encyclopedia.[9]
And while economic shifts helped solidify the link between the magic of the Tooth Fairy and the magic of capitalism, there is perhaps a greater lesson to be learned than everything—including one’s own body—can be converted to cash. Some Tooth Fairies are said to pay more for cleaner teeth, giving the child incentive to have good dental hygiene. And harkening back to earlier traditions that were more rooted in magic and religion, the Tooth Fairy’s arrival coincides with the child’s passage into a new life phase.
While some scholars link the loss of a child’s first tooth to the resolution of the Oedipal conflict, Wells offers an interesting insight into the way this rite of passage takes a child through the significant phases outlined by Arnold van Gennep: separation, transition, and incorporation. For American children who celebrate the loss of each baby tooth, not just the first one, this process is repeated over years, and by the time the child loses his/her last baby tooth, usually around the age of ten, he/she no longer believes in Tooth Fairy, and perhaps this only intensifies folklorist Tad Tuleja’s point: “In an economy where the ultimate magic is the power of money, the responsible parent ironically prepares the child for reality by encouraging a fantasy that Wells appropriately calls ‘a reassuring image of good capitalist values.’”[10]
[1] “The Telltale Teeth: Psychodonia to Sociodontia,” PLMA, vol. 91, no. 1, Jan. 1976.
[2] Ibid., pp. 11-12.
[3] "The Non-therapeutic Extraction of Teeth and Its Relation to the Ritual Disposal of Shed Deciduous Teeth,” British Dental Journal, 1963. Michelle Konstantinovsky, “Cash for Teeth: The Legend of the Tooth Fairy, How Stuff Works, Feb. 6, 2020. https://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/tooth-fairy.htm
[4] Rosemary Wells, “The Making of an Icon: The Tooth Fairy in North American Folklore and Popular Culture,” The Good People: New Fairylore Essays, ed. Peter Narváez, The University Press of Kentucky: Lexington, 1991, p. 428.
[5] “Don’t tell the kids: The Real History of the Tooth Fairy,” Salon, Feb. 9, 2014. https://www.salon.com/2014/02/09/dont_tell_the_kids_the_real_history_of_the_tooth_fairy/
[6] Tad Tuleja, “The Tooth Fairy: Perspectives on Money and Magic,” The Good People: New Fairylore Essays, ed. Peter Narváez, The University Press of Kentucky: Lexington, 1991.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Krista Killgrove, “Where Did the Tooth Fairy Come From?” Forbes, Sept. 14, 2016. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2016/09/14/where-did-the-tooth-fairy-come-from/#2bcf949159d4
[10] Tad Tuleja, “The Tooth Fairy: Perspectives on Money and Magic,” The Good People: New Fairylore Essays, ed. Peter Narváez, The University Press of Kentucky: Lexington, 1991, p. 418.