Why do we eat black-eyed peas on New Years? Here’s how it’s traditionally said to bring good luck.

Americans eat black-eyed peas for New Year’s to bring good luck in the coming year.

But that’s the short answer. Long includes a shared family tradition that celebrates the rich heritage of beans in Africa and the Americas.

But first, a practical tip: It’s time to start soaking the beans.

Why do we eat black-eyed peas for New Years?

“My mother was the type of person who never bought canned black-eyed peas,” said chef Christopher “Luck” Bell. “You have to soak them overnight first.”

A bull can close his eyes and remember his mother’s traditional dish.

“They’ll be delicious,” he said. “They’re going to – definitely going to – go to white rice.”

The chef at Atlanta’s famed global soul food restaurant “Oritha’s at the Point” said beans were part of how his family ushered in the New Year when he was growing up in Chicago.

“From what I understand, the black-eyed peas are symbolic of the coins,” Bell said. ”

Soul food historian and James Beard Award-winning author Adrian Miller has been eating black-eyed peas during New Year’s since childhood.

“The black-eyed peas represent the coin, while the green represents the folding money,” Miller said.

“My mom’s from Chattanooga, Tennessee. My dad’s from Helena, Arkansas. So even growing up in the suburbs of Denver we carried that tradition,” Miller said.

“After 50-plus years of doing this, the results in terms of prosperity are very mixed,” Miller said.

Where did the New Year tradition begin?

“Many cultures will have special foods on auspicious days. New Year’s Day for us, Lunar New Year for many cultures in Asia,” Miller said. “You’re carrying on a culinary tradition that goes back at least a century or more, so you feel a connection.”

Some argue that the tradition is more about honoring the past than inviting future riches, and in the case of the black-eyed pea, that connection leads to dark times.

“Many times, black-eyed peas and other foodstuffs from West Africa supplied the slave ships,” Miller said, adding that enslaved Africans who endured the middle passage They were fed cow and yam.

“We now know that slaves were commonly fed black-eyed pea-based dishes during the voyage, including black-eyed peas and rice, commonly known as hoppin’ John,” Miller said. ”

“I think people feel a really strong connection to the past, especially to their ancestors, and given the African-American experience in this country, there’s a time-honored tradition that people love — that It’s positive – I think it’s something that leads people to embrace it.”

According to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, more clues to this tradition can be found in the events that took place on December 31, 1862.

Known as Watch Night, or “Evening of Independence,” African Americans anxiously awaited midnight for the Emancipation Proclamation to take effect.

Religious services honoring Watch Night are still held today, and according to the museum, the occasion is usually accompanied by a meal that includes collard greens and hoppin’ johns.

Chef Sherry L. Riley of Waco, Texas, while doing research for her cookbook, “Gifts from the Ancestors, Volume One, Okra and Tomatoes,” found that black-eyed peas brought income during the Civil War. She calls beans the food of freedom.

“These foods helped many enslaved Africans and sharecroppers make their way north with the Great Migration,” Riley said, offering another argument for the dish’s enduring powers in spirit.

The New Year tradition, he said, “is definitely us paying homage to the ancestors for all that they endured.”

“Even people up north, like in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia — people with roots in Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia — they’re going to cook it.”

In her research, Riley also traces the evolution of the dish as it spread across the United States.

“They needed to adapt,” Riley said of African Americans settling in different parts of the U.S. “They had to modify based on indigenous ingredients found there.”

“You know, cooking just tells that beautiful story,” Riley said. “If you follow a recipe, it will give you that heritage. Eventually, you’ll be able to tie it together and we’re more alike than that.”

How many people eat black-eyed peas for New Years?

Although it is unclear how many people are involved in the New Year’s tradition, the use of black-eyed peas is widespread. Raleigh found that black-eyed peas also brought prosperity to women in northern Brazil, where another port had forced millions of enslaved West Africans across the Atlantic.

“It’s our cultural history, and I think those things come together so you can identify with people.”

Riley trades recipes and stories with Sandra Rocha Ivanova, who lives near Seattle, Washington, but was born in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia. Avonoff chooses lentils for good luck on New Year’s Eve, as do many South Americans, but considers black-eyed peas part of her cultural patronage.

Afro-Brazilian women prepared Acarajé, made from black-eyed peas of Yoruba origin linked to Nigeria, to sell in Salvador, the capital of Bahia. According to research from the University of Chicago, research shows that street vendors will contribute profits to their owners, but retain some for their own social mobility.

“Acarajé was a food that enslaved women in Brazil sold on the streets of Bahia to buy their freedom,” Evanoff said.

Ivanov also had black-eyed peas at her wedding—her now-husband George, a white man from Tennessee who grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, first popped the question, since they were married that year. was in the middle, there was a deviation from it. Family New Year tradition.

“I told him, why not? I like black-eyed peas,” Ivanov said.

Do you eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day?

Adrian Miller, a soul food scholar who eats black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day, says that since the tradition is not set in stone, neither is the day celebrated.

“We usually do it on New Year’s Eve,” said chef Christian Bell. “We have a big seafood feast with black-eyed peas and rice.”

Chef Sherry L. Reilly is less attached to results and time.

“I don’t know why I felt so superstitious about it, but I’ll tell you what, it’s ingrained in me to figure out what’s in my freezer,” Riley said.