New year celebrated with old traditions

2018 starts a new year, but with it comes old traditions. Many stayed up to watch Dick Clark’s celebration in New York while others went to party with friends. Still others stayed home to stay up late with family while some just went to bed.

Where did our New Year’s traditions come from? In parts of the South, New Year’s Eve may not be met with much enthusiasm, but the New Year’s Day meal is a Southern treat.

Some households prefer to eat only black eyed peas, often flavored with ham hocks (the shank end of a pig’s leg bone, just above the ankle), to bring in good luck. Other homes have a Southern feast of greens to bring dollars, black eyed peas to bring sense (or cents), cornbread to symbolize a bright future and ham because pork symbolizes wealth and prosperity.

The greens are an easy idea to wrap one’s head around. The leafy goodness looks quite similar to folded dollars, and as such, eating it on New Year’s Day is said to bring wealth in the coming year. Whether the greens should be collard, mustard or kale varies by household, as does the method of cooking.

The tradition of black eyed peas on New Year’s can be blamed, like so many other things, on Texas. The beans, often cooked with fatty pork, is definitely of African-American tradition. There is a myth that the invading Northern armies ate all crops except black-eyed peas, but it is known that the beans were grown by Thomas Jefferson. George Washington Carver also grew them as a way to replenish nutrients in otherwise depleted soil.

They didn’t become a popular New Year’s fare, however, until 1937 when Texas farmers set about a marketing strategy targeting celebrities and reporters by sending a can of black eyed peas with a note about them being good luck. Later, a can made its way to President Franklin Roosevelt from said farmers saying the beans were a symbol of American perseverance. By 1943, black eyed peas had a place at the table in the majority of homes.

Cornbread is an old food, cooked in some forms by Native Americans. It came to its more recognizable and flavorful form in thanks to African-Americans and poor farmers who would mix it with flour in order to make a bread. It is traditionally cooked in a cast iron skillet with a bit of oil, usually fried. The yellow corn meal and circular nature of the pan gives it the look of a gold coin, so in that way, it has come to symbolize money. It also resembles the sun, which may lend itself to be a symbol of bright days in the new year.

Ham, of course, already has the expression “eating high on the hog.” It was the flesh from the more tender portions of the animal, usually the upper regions, that lent itself to the expression. The lower portions, such as feet, hocks, legs and innards (read chitlins) were the cheap portions of the animal left over. It has long been a symbol of wealth and prosperity, so eating it on New Year’s Day was a no-brainer for most people

Besides, we just had turkey for the last two months.

HHJ News