Does the Shoe Superstition Apply to Slippers and Sandals?

Anyone who has been warned off giving shoes eventually asks the obvious follow-up. Slippers are footwear. Sandals are footwear. Does the same warning cover them, or was it only ever about shoes proper?

The answer depends entirely on which version of the belief a person is carrying, and this is where the three strands separate most usefully.

If the objection is the walking-away one, the reasoning is about movement. Shoes carry a person out of the door and out of your life. On that logic slippers are close to exempt, because indoor footwear is the opposite of departure. Somebody wearing house slippers is by definition staying. Several families who will not give shoes give slippers without a second thought, and the distinction is consistent rather than arbitrary.

If the objection is the South Asian one about feet and rank, the exemption disappears. That reading is about what the object touches and where it sits in the order of the household, and slippers, sandals and boots all sit in exactly the same place as shoes. Here the material matters not at all and the relationship between the two people matters entirely.

If the objection is astrological, it narrows again in a different direction, because leather is the part that carries the association. A leather sandal attracts the caution, a cloth slipper attracts much less of it.

Which is to say there is no single answer, and anyone who gives you one confidently is quoting one tradition and leaving out the other two. The practical move, if you are unsure which version is held in the house you are giving into, is to ask rather than to reason it out. People are usually happy to explain their own family's rule, and the explanation tells you which of the three you are dealing with.

The coin settles all three versions at once, which is convenient, and is probably why it has survived as the standard remedy across such different places. Whatever the objection was, a purchase is not a gift, and the rule has nothing to attach to.