The New York Stock Exchange is closed today, as it has been every Good Friday for nearly a century and a half except for in 1898, 1906 and 1907, Bloomberg reported in a story focusing on the tradition, which may be based more on myth than fact.

The last time the NYSE was open for business on Good Friday was in the same year as the infamous Panic of 1907, when the value of U.S. stocks plunged by more than a third. Hence, a legend that persists 101 years later: Traders get to stay home the Friday before Easter not just because it’s a Christian holy day but because of its association with one of history’s great bear markets.

Brooks P. Nelson, a second-generation professional investor, remembers his father telling him the story every year: “He used to say, “It’s closed on Good Friday because of the panic of aught-seven,'” Nelson said. Rumor had it that in 1907, “the good Irish-Catholic traders said, “We told you not to open on Good Friday.'”

Supposedly, the tale went, the market behaved so badly that the exchange vowed never to allow trading on Good Friday again. Circumstantial evidence aside, market historians and the NYSE itself say the story is without foundation.

“I have no evidence in the archives that I’ve seen or the notes of the details that would prove that theory,” said Robert F. Bruner, co-author of “The Panic of 1907,” published last year, and dean of the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. “The panic itself occurred in October 1907, although in March of 1907, there was a significant break in the market.”

The Friday before Easter is the only one of nine stock-market holidays that isn’t also a federal holiday. Other U.S. stock, options and derivatives exchanges, including the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, also are shut today. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association recommends that bond markets close in Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.