If you’re invited to Christmas Dinner at your friend’s house, you never know what will be on the menu. Of course ham and turkey make an appearance on many Southern tables, but so do many other things. My friend always has lobster. Another has a standing rib roast. My granddaughter has a big buffet of heavy hors d’oeuvres. It won’t necessarily be a traditional Christmas meal, but if go on New Year’s Day I can almost 100% tell you about part of the menu.
On New Year’s Day almost all Southerners serve black eyed peas and collard greens. That’s what I had this year along with cornbread and chicken pie. I usually serve ham with it, but I did a ham for Christmas this year and didn’t want another one so soon. So where did this tradition come from, and why do people follow it?
They do it for the simplest reason in the world. The black eyed peas bring good luck, and the green collards stand for money. People have been eating these foods for hundred’s of years even though not everyone started eating them for those reasons. We think the Jewish people ate black eyed peas for Rosh Hashanah, and if you eat your peas with rice that’s an African tradition. One reason that Southerners started to eat these foods so much is that in the Civil War food was scarce, and these foods weren’t expensive. No one in the Confederacy had money to waste. Oh, and if you served cornbread with your peas and greens it represented gold.
Think about trying this tradition next year at your house. Look up various recipes to give you a hint about what you want to do. You may not get especially healthy or lucky, but you’ll have a really nice dinner.
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