Being a daughter of the South, my mama taught me what to cook on New Year’s Day.
Although I don’t remember that we really had significant New Year’s Eve parties, we did manage to stay up to midnight some years.
Our church was our main social event, and we didn’t have watch night services. My friends and I during my teen years didn’t have parties. So mostly we celebrated New Year by eating peas, greens, and corn bread!
Black eye peas — we didn’t really eat them that much when I was growing up. Nobody in the family just LOVED them and had to have them on a regular basis. Whenever we had peas, Daddy liked to say his line “peas, peas the musical fruit, the more you eat, the more you” you know the rest. You can also substitute “beans.”
Anyway, on New Year’s Day, the table was set with a hot bowl of peas cooked with a ham bone with lots of ham on it, onions because Daddy liked onions in most everything, and salt and pepper. They were good with cornbread!
That brings us to the second thing we had to have on New Year’s — corn bread. Not from a box. Not particularly sweet. But golden corn bread with a crispy, hard browned bottom and a moist hot inside where we slathered sweet butter. We had a corn bread pan, and woe to the person who cooked anything but corn bread in it! That was a big kitchen sin. The corn bread pan was only for corn bread. Period.
Turnip greens, collard greens, mustard greens — some kind of greens were going to find their way on the table for New Year. Cooked again with meat, usually ham, and salt and pepper along with a little touch of sugar, the greens were started early and cooked down to tender deliciousness.
There you had it! The big three. And there were traditions handed down with each dish. The peas were to represent wealth. You would have a dollar, or money, for each pea you ate! Some said you should eat 365 peas to have money all year. But if you ate over 365 — woe is you. You would lose money every day for every pea over 365 you ate.
The greens — as you would expect— also meant wealth, money, or cash. The more greens you ate, the more money would find its way to you in the new year.
Then what about the corn bread? Golden! Like wealth, money, riches, the corn bread also represented wealth or money or riches.
The New Year foods all center around physical wealth in the world around us. Did these traditions come from experiences of being deprived, poor, without? Did we seek wealth through superstitions in fear of what financial disasters could await us in the New Year?
As Christians, isn’t it wonderful we are not at the mercy of superstitions? In God we have our future, our security, our peace, and life.
In Matthew 6:19, we learn:
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth.” His Word for every piece of corn bread? Or more obedience for all the greens we eat?
Just saying…
Happy and Blessed New Year!
