Eating Black-Eyed Peas On New Year's Day Means More Than You Probably Thought

If you love New Year's traditions, maybe you'll be reaching for a bowl of black-eyed peas right after the ball drops. It's a custom that's particularly popular in the South, and the food, which originated in Africa, became a New Year's traditional American meal during the Civil War era. Flavored with ham hock, aromatic vegetables, bay leaves, thyme, and smoked paprika, black-eyed peas are savory and satisfying — perfect for balancing out all those New Year's French 75 cocktails and champagne toasts (the dark story of how the French 75 got its name also has ties to wartime).

There's more to the black-eyed peas New Year's tradition than a satisfying meal, though. It's long been said that eating black-eyed peas as your first meal of the new year will bring good fortune and luck, especially if you pair them with corn bread and collard greens: a root vegetable that can be traced back centuries throughout the African Diaspora. When eaten in this context, black-eyed peas represent coins (some people even put a coin in the pot as they cook for extra luck), cornbread symbolizes gold, and the collard greens symbolize paper money. Any pork in the dish represents prosperity and progress. Throw all these food elements together, and you have the lucky soul-food classic, Hoppin' John. Eat 365 beans, exactly, and some say you'll have the best chance at a good dose of luck in the year ahead.

Black-eyed peas came to America with enslaved people in the 1600s. Even then, the dish served on special occasions in West Africa was already considered lucky. There are two different stories that tell the origin of the American New Year's black-eyed peas tradition. The first story details a Union Army raid on a Confederate camp's food supply during the Civil War. Union soldiers took every bit of their food cache, except for black-eyed peas, which were seen at that time as food for livestock. During the long winter that followed, Confederate soldiers lived off those black-eyed peas, and thus they became a symbol of perseverance, abundance, and luck.

The other origin story points to the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. To celebrate the landmark legislation, enslaved people ate black-eyed peas in honor of their newly established freedom. Both stories represent perseverance, good fortune, and hope for the forthcoming year, and give deeper meaning to a tradition that has marked special occasions across centuries and continents. So, scoop yourself a bowl of resilience and prosperity this New Year's, and maybe you'll get a little luck along with the rest of those tasty sides.