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Not everybody eats black-eyed peas on New Year's

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The most interestin' New Year's Eve that I can remember was when my aunt & uncle from Illinois visited. We searched all over town that day before because they had to have pickled herring in sour cream sauce at the stroke of midnight so that they could have good luck all year. Of course, no one in our little town had even heard of eating that, so we had to make a trip to the big city, where some of those rich businessmen were transplants from the North. Well, we finally found some and made it home in time to watch all of the New Year's Eve programs on TV.

So, when it was midnight, instead of black-eyed peas, my aunt and uncle were putting this foul-smellin' pickled herring on crackers--and they wanted me to try it. Yuk!

To each his own, I guess. So I started surfin' around and found that people eat a lot of strange things for luck at New Year's. I also started wonderin' why we eat black-eyed peas, for that matter. I ran upon one interesting story from the Jan. 2001 Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine, in a space entitled Legend, Lore & Legacy, subtitled "The Great Black-Eyed Pea Hoax," by C.F. Eckhardt. According to this article,

It seems that in 1947 a man named Elmore R. Torn, Sr. was essentially the one-man Athens/Henderson Co. Chamber of Commerce, in a struggling community that Houston and Dallas hadn't "discovered" yet. Its industries, Eckhardt wrote, were "oil, farming, oil, pottery, oil, and a cannery."

And one of the products of the cannery was black-eyed peas. Today canned black-eyed peas are quite tasty, but in 1947 they looked like '"rayish-tan lumpy library paste with black spots scattered in it" Eckhardt notes. And that's just about what they tasted like too, "with heavy overtones of tinplate and salt."

Challenged to create a market for this unappealing product, while boosting the local economy, Torn went to work. (Just an historical note here that has no relevance to this story that I can see: Torn's son is Elmore R. Torn, Jr., aka actor Rip Torn.)

Torn, Sr. began his task by having the cannery make up several dozen two-ounce cans of black-eyed peas. Then, his genius in overdrive, he began to write.

Eckhardt's story continues: "Eating black-eyed peas for good luck on New Year's Day, Elmore wrote, was a fine old antebellum Southern tradition that had been viciously suppressed by the d___ Yankees during Reconstruction. Jeff Davis, Stonewall Jackson ­ even Marse Robert Lee himself ­ partook of the unique Southern delicacy known as the black-eyed pea every New Year's Day for good luck in the coming year.

"Why, the reason the South lost was a failure of the black-eyed pea crop in 1863, which led to the Confederate reverses in '64 and ultimately to the humiliation of Appomattox in April of '65.

"The tradition, he wrote, was hoary long before the war, but had been suppressed by the Yankees for the nine long years of Reconstruction in Texas. It was time for all good Southerners to rise up and reclaim this great, almost-lost bit of Southern heritage. Who knows, it might lead to the South rising once more.

"And, of course, what better way to serve black-eyed peas for New Year's Day dinner than with convenient, tasty (he may have gagged slightly there), canned black-eyed peas from Athens, Texas?"

However, some say it goes back a lot farther than that:

If you are from the South, that is, the Southern part of the United States, you already know all about Hoppin' John and perhaps you serve it to yourself and guests every New Year's. It was a Texan who first said to me, "Of course, you must have black-eyed peas for New Year's-- it brings good luck."

I got to wondering about this and soon found that it was more than a matter of serving black-eyed peas. It was actually a mixture of black-eyed peas, rice and ham hocks or bacon, and it had a name. It was called "Hoppin' John." . . .

In fact, the dish appears to have African, or African-American roots, as the black-eyed pea is the seed of the cowpea, a delicacy in North Africa. According to a 1788 account, the food on slave ships was a combination of fava beans, yams, rice and possibly a bit of pork or other meat. When they got to America and were able to substitute black-eyed peas for the "horse beans" the slave traders served them, the Africans improved on the dish and it became popular.

Still another idea is that

In Georgia, it's a tradition to eat black-eyed peas and turnip greens. The peas represent copper and the greens are dollars. We say each pea you eat equals one dollar's worth of earning, and each portion of turnip greens equals $1,000. . . .Some people say that it brings good luck and prosperity. This may be founded in truth because a 3-ounce portion of black-eyed peas and turnip greens is good for the digestive system. It helps clean out the digestive system.

And here's a link for those of you who want to know what the rest of the world is doing: New Year's Customs Worldwide - TOPICS Online Magazine - TOPICS Online Magazine for ESL

Posted by Susan R at December 30, 2004 07:18 PM