New Year's Day 2007

A good day with which to begin another year. We slept in a little bit, then got ready and went over the mountain to my mother-in-law's house, where we had the traditional New Year's Day meal of collard greens, black-eyed peas, corn bread and ham.

A Southern Dinner for the New Year Centers Around Traditions

Dec 27, 2006 (Destin Log - McClatchy-Tribune Business News)

"Eat poor on New Year's, eat fat the rest of the year."

For years, this old Southern saying has dictated the eating habits of people in the South on New Year's Day.

A traditional Southern New Year's meal usually includes ham, corn bread, black-eyed peas and collard greens.

A staple in the Southern diet for more than 300 years, black-eyed peas have long been associated with good luck.

It is said that the eating of black-eyed peas on New Year's Day started during the Civil War. The Northern soldiers raided the South's food supplies one New Year's Eve and took all the food except for the dried black-eyed peas and the salted pork.

On New Year's Day, all that the Southern soldiers had to eat were the peas and pork to keep them alive, so it is considered good luck to eat black-eyed peas on New Year's.

Others say black-eyed peas, also known as cowpeas, are thought to bring wealth because they look like little coins, in addition to the fact that they swell when cooked--a sure sign of prosperity.

Still others say that each blackeyed pea eaten on New Year's Day ensures one day of good luck in the coming year, or that they must be eaten before noon to bring good luck.

Collard greens are considered lucky because they are green, like folding money.

And eating corn bread brings gold in the new year. The starch in the meal is usually rice, a symbol of abundance.

And the hog, and thus its meat, is considered lucky because it symbolizes prosperity.

Traditions are handed down from generation to generation, representing the hope for happiness, prosperity and health in each new year.

When I left my mother-in-law's house, I sat in the car at the first stop sign and looked up at a sky striking in its contrasts. Above the hills and mountains in front of me, the sky was dark with clouds threatening rain. But above me and behind me, the sky was clear blue. Once upon a time I would have thought of this as the way life works. We have our storms and our clear days, our bad luck and our good, our troubled and our easy times.

But I don't think like this any more. I haven't trusted blue skies since that September morning in 2001 when two passenger jets descended unsteadily from a beautiful blue sky and crashed into two buildings that stood reflecting that sky and gleaming in the sun.

I still admire blue skies (real ones and metaphorical ones), but I don't trust them. Faith, family and friends now provide the images of hope, stability and promise that I need to keep rising in the morning, putting one foot in front of the other throughout the day and then lying down again at night. And so with these three--faith, family and friends--I look forward to 2007 and whatever the year might bring.