Why do we eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s? Here’s how the tradition is said to bring good luck. | Global News Avenue

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

But that’s the short answer. Long involved in a shared family tradition that celebrates the legumes’ thriving heritage in Africa and the Americas.

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

Why do we eat black-eyed peas during Chinese New Year?

“My mother was someone who never bought canned black-eyed peas,” says chef Christopher “Luke” Bell. “You have to soak them overnight first.”

Bell can close his eyes and recall his mother’s traditional dishes.

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

The chef at Oreatha’s At The Point, Atlanta’s popular global soul food restaurant, said the beans were part of his family’s New Year’s greeting when he was growing up in Chicago.

“It’s my understanding that the black-eyed pea is the appearance of a coin. It’s supposed to represent good luck,” Bell said. “Our tradition is to spend the New Year in a very luxurious way and hopefully we can carry that into the new year as well.”

Soul food historian and James Beard Award-winning author Adrian Miller has been eating black-eyed peas around New Year’s since he was a kid.

“The black-eyed peas represent coins, and the green represents folded money,” Miller said.

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

“After more than 50 years of hard work, the results of the boom have been mixed,” Miller said.

Where did the New Year’s tradition originate?

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

Some believe the tradition is more about honoring the past than praying for future fortunes, and in the case of black-eyed peas, the connection goes back to darker times.

“A lot of times, black-eyed peas and other foods from West Africa fed the slave ships,” Miller said, adding that African slaves forced to endure the Middle Passage were fed soybeans and yams.

“We now know that slaves often ate a black-eyed pea-based dish consisting of black-eyed peas and rice during their journey, which was often called a ‘Hobby John,'” Miller said.

“I think people do feel a strong connection to the past, especially to their ancestors, and given the African-American experience in this country, having a long tradition that people love – which is positive – I think that It’s something that leads people to embrace it.”

According to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the celebration of December 31, 1862 may contain more clues about this tradition.

During what came to be known as Watch Night or Freedom Eve, African Americans anxiously awaited the midnight announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Religious ceremonies commemorating the night of the vigil are still held today and, according to the museum, are often followed by a meal of collard greens and Hobeen John.

Chef Sheri L. Raleigh of Waco, Texas, discovered black-eyed peas while researching her cookbook, Gifts from the Ancestors, Volume One, Okra and Tomatoes brought income during the Civil War. She calls beans a liberation food.

“These foods helped make it possible for many enslaved Africans and sharecroppers to reach the North through the Great Migration,” said Rowley, who makes another argument for the enduring power of the dish’s soul.

The New Year’s tradition, she said, “is definitely where we honor our ancestors for what they suffered.”

“Even people from the North, people from Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia — people from Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia — they do this.”

In her research, Rowley also traced the dish’s evolution as it spread across the Americas.

“They had to adapt,” Rowley said of the African Americans who settled in different parts of the United States. “They had to modify it based on the native ingredients they found there.”

“You know, cooking just tells that beautiful story,” Rowley said. “If you follow a recipe, it gives you that tradition. Eventually, you’ll be able to bring it together and we’re a lot more alike than we are different.”

How many people eat black-eyed peas during Chinese New Year?

While it’s unclear how many people participate in the New Year’s tradition, eating black-eyed peas is common. Rowley found that black-eyed peas also brought prosperity to women in northern Brazil, where another port received millions of West African slaves forced across the Atlantic.

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

Rowley swaps recipes and stories with Sandra Rocha Evanoff. Sandra Rocha Evanov was born in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia and lives near Seattle, Washington. Evanoff, like many South Americans, chooses lentils for good luck at New Year’s Day, but she considers black-eyed peas part of her cultural heritage.

Afro-Brazilian women prepare Acarajé, a fritter made with black-eyed peas that originates from Nigeria’s Yoruba people and is sold in Salvador, the capital of Bahia state. Research from the University of Chicago shows that street vendors contribute profits to their owners but keep some for their own social mobility.

“Acarajé was a food that Brazilian slave women used to sell on the streets of Bahia in exchange for their freedom,” Evanov said.

Evanoff even ate black-eyed peas at her wedding—something her now-husband George, a white man from Tennessee who grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, initially questioned, Because their wedding was held in the middle of the year, it was different from his wedding. Family New Year Traditions.

“I told him, why not? I love black-eyed peas,” Evanoff said.

Black-eyed peas on New Year’s Eve or black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day?

Adrian Miller, a soul food scholar who eats black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day, says that because the origins of the tradition are not set in stone, neither are the days of celebration.

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

Chef Sheri L. Raleigh cares less about results and time.

“I don’t know that I’m that superstitious about it, but I’ll tell you, it’s ingrained in me and guess what’s in my refrigerator,” Rowley said.