Interesting. My mother, God rest her, would
insist I eat at least as many black-eyed peas to equal the number of my years, every New Years Day, and was remarkably free of any other such traditions. She rose out of grinding poverty in Texas, as did my father, and both observed the rite. I would just as adamantly refuse, since I detested the taste of all beans as a youngster. It led to an annual standoff, though by her persistence she ultimately prevailed until I reached a certain age where my father intervened on my side, and I afterward celebrated an empty triumph, and over the years forgot the thing.
Today, after a difficult year and relieved to be free of ever again living in a year numbered in any way with a 13, I renewed the tradition on my own, though at my advancing health more to honor her. A man should keep faith with his parents even when they're dead, and honoring our father in mother, in the commandments, comes also with a promise, "that it will go well with you in the land."
Searching back, I was surprised to discover the southern side of this tradition prevails from Texas, even in families of many generations dating back before the WTBS, to North Carolina, at least, where leaving the Union would not have occurred (and nearly didn't) had the latter not found itself surrounded by separated States after having first rejected secession.
Someone here speculated the black-eyed pea symbolized the "evil eye" tradition, though I did not believe that. It is not a tradition common in the South, among the Whites, anyway, and especially among those families who, in North Carolina, still remember the oral tradition praising the former slaves who, at legal risk, fed their White neighbors, sometimes with Freeman benefits. This is not the case in Texas, where the Freeman Bureau's brief influence was not as widespread, though many hundreds of thousands of poor Whites did migrated there during, so-called, "Reconstruction."
There are those who believe that federal policy never ended, though resistance to it did cease at the admonition of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Those same people say the policy just went nationwide, to those places in particular where the Klan, for example, enjoyed its greatest membership, at its peak and afterward; places including Indiana, Illinois, etc.
An interesting tradition, indeed. Regardless of your own celebration for the New Year, to my fellow Americans, God grant you joy!
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