Let’s get one thing out of the way right up front. The only real bad luck you’ll encounter in the matter of giving knives as gifts is having the kind of friends who think giving knives as gifts is bad luck. Sure, you can go through the rigmarole of exchanging coins as tokens when the knife changes hands – a cute ritual signifying that you’ve “paid” for it, nullifying the severed-friendship connotation of knife-giving – or you could simply put the superstition to one side….

