Can We Talk 2

New Year Traditions

         My mother was superstitious, so I heard a lot of them when I was growing up. We had to have black eye peas on New Years Day for good luck. The rest of the menu just seemed to go with it: Greens, cornbread, stewed tomatoes (Southern style, not Italian), and iced tea. The meat would vary according to what we had or what was on sale. I'll fix all that tomorrow, but with ground steaks.

         We had a neighbor who said it was bad luck for a woman to visit your home on New Year's, and I remember thinking I hoped she wouldn't bring a curse on us by visiting, although I normally liked to see her. I've also heard that whatever you do on New Year's Day is what you'll be doing the rest of the year. I thought it was primarily to keep people from being hung over on the first. However, I always make sure I do something fun and/or relaxing on New Year's, if it's only reading a good book or binge watching old movies. Apparently, some of that superstition is ingrained in me.

         There is some work that day, because you have to go on with clean floors and meals, and so forth. But there's also the removal of Christmas decorations. My mom used to say you would get sick if the Christmas things stayed up. That probably had more to do with a real tree dropping its leaves and becoming a fire hazard, as well as other live greenery. I know plenty of people who leave it up longer without illness of obvious bad luck. Then there is the rare person who wants it all out of sight within a few days after Christmas. Never in my mother's house. I know two women with beautiful artificial trees who leave them up all year long. They dust them occasionally, but they have the room for them, and they're big and out of the traffic pattern.

         Some people have to have a hog's head for Christmas. According to a British documentary I saw, this was Tudor custom. But where I live, it's mostly in the black neighborhoods. I worked at a grocer who sold them. They are spooky looking. Some cashiers would freak out and couldn't pick one up. I'm tough. I would excuse myself to the customer who heard the cashier screaming next to me, go ring up the hog's head, wrapped in meat plastic with the usual label, and put it in a bag by itself so she wouldn't have to see it. They're also a little fragile; you don't want to break its snout or crack the skull before you get it home. It looked to me like there's hardly any meat left on it, but the documentary showed it cooked and decorated. It's an acquired taste. That store still sells them. They sell a ton of them, with none left over.

         I'm not too keen on resolutions. I always break them. I can make resolutions any time of year, not just January. I will also break them any time I make them.

         Happy New Year.