Tomorrow will bring 2020 to a close. It has been a year unlike any other. During the pandemic, our seasonal celebrations were far from traditional. As we struggle to regain normalcy, many of us will enjoy the foods that are as much a part of New Year’s menus as turkey is for Thanksgiving.
Eating collards (or any other green of your choice, including turnip greens and cabbage) is supposed to ensure that one has plentiful “folding money” in the coming year. Black-eyed peas represent coins. These peas kept some southerners from starving to death during the food shortages of the civil war. Union soldiers considered them animal fodder, and did not destroy fields of them. As a child, I disliked cooked greens and tried to ensure my wealth by gobbling large quantities of peas, always seasoned with bacon.
Ownership of pigs and other livestock has long been considered a mark of prosperity. Eating pork is supposed to bring gardening and/or financial success in the coming year. An alternate explanation is that pork consumption symbolizes progress into the future, much as pigs use their snouts to push forward when foraging for food. If you are one of the many whose landscaping has been destroyed by rooting of wild hogs, you are less likely to see the charm of this soil nudging. I once visited a swine farm in Vermont where the farmer put bowling balls in his pigsties for entertainment, to keep piglets from rooting up the posts of the fence that contained them.
Cornbread is the final component of traditional New Year’s dinner. It symbolizes gold. Americans adopted cornbread from Native Americans. There are regional differences. Northern recipes tend to add a bit of flour and sugar to the mix, while most southerners skip the sugar but may add pork cracklings. My husband is a purist, insisting on no sugar or wheat flour, and mandating that buttermilk is a required component of the mix. I can forgo the sugar, but find that adding chopped jalapenos elevates from so-so to delicious. To each their own.
Whether you choose to welcome the new year with traditional choices or tofu and vegan selections, I wish for you and your families a happy, healthy 2021.
A view of wild turkeys from my kitchen window yesterday. They must realize that Thanksgiving is past…
…while another flock of turkeys wander down the driveway. The males “gobble” while this group of hens make odd clicking noises.