New Year’s traditions: Fat makes you lucky and greens make you rich

New Year’s traditions: Fat makes you lucky and greens make you rich
                        
By now, you are stuffed full of pork and sauerkraut. Around these parts, it is the traditional food for New Year’s Eve and the first of January, thought to bring good luck in the coming year. I doubt any of us who eat this dish year after year and continue to have rotten luck will give much credence to the superstition, but who are we to tempt fate? Pork is a widespread traditional food for New Year’s celebrations, and the sauerkraut addition stems from our area’s early settlers, who were largely German. Pork—in its various forms—brings with it fat, and the fat is the lucky thing, which brings a year fat with prosperity. The kraut symbolizes plenty; Germans wish each other as much good fortune as there are shreds of cabbage on their plate. Most areas of the world have a traditional New Year’s food, eaten for luck. In many of our southern states, black-eyed peas are the thing. As nearly as I can tell, this tradition dates to the Civil War, when having a stash of humble black-eyed peas was a lucky thing during a long Yankee siege. The beans also represent approaching the New Year with humility. Cook them with some kind of fat pork and add greens, perhaps collards, and you can hope for a fat year, green with money. Serve it all with cornbread, which is the color of gold, and you are ready for a southern New Year of good fortune. In many New England states, they eat salmon and green peas. Fish in general are believed to be a lucky food because they swim ever forward. The green peas are a symbol of green, lucky cash. Most American traditions, of course, come from somewhere else. In Spain, Portugal, Hungary and Austria, suckling pig is the thing. Austrians, no slackers in the celebration department, add small piglets represented in marzipan, to the lucky New Year table. Spaniards add grapes, eaten in a neat dozen at the stroke of midnight. All the sweet grapes consumed among the dozen represent a good month ahead. Sour grapes mark unpleasant months. Doughnuts and other round cakes represent the circular nature of life as it moves forward. The recurring theme is to attach your early January eating to things moving forward—another reason pork is so widespread is that pigs root forward as they eat. It follows that things moving backward are not so lucky; avoid eating backward-swimming squid or lobsters, for example, to avoid setbacks in life. Even chicken is a no-no, because they scratch backwards. Furthermore, poultry represents fortune, which can fly away, so it’s best to avoid anything on the wing. Things easily eaten in abundance (like our kraut) or presented in a long form are good luck. Italians accomplish this with dishes of tiny lentils, while the Japanese eat soba, or buckwheat noodles, at midnight. The long noodles represent a year of plenty, so the longer the noodles, the better. In Sweden, one is served cakes with a whole almond baked in; the almond standing in for actual coin money. Other cultures skip the symbolism and bake actual coins directly into cakes or cookies, or create cookies that look like coins. Whatever New Year’s tradition your family observes, you cannot go wrong with the addition of good champagne. A happy, fat, green, plentiful and prosperous New Year to us all, and happy cooking!


Loading next article...

End of content

No more pages to load