New Year’s Day foods in the Skylands

In Haiti the first meal of the year is soup joumou, a pumpkin soup with vegetables, plantains, meat and pasta. Under French rule it was reserved for slave owners, and the people who cooked it weren’t allowed to eat it. They took it for themselves with independence in 1804. UNESCO added it to its heritage list in 2021.

Black-eyed peas are native to West Africa and were among the provisions on slave ships. The Emancipation Proclamation took effect at midnight as 1862 ended, and Watch Night services have traditionally been followed by a New Year’s Day meal of Hoppin’ John, black-eyed peas and rice. Food historian Adrian Miller’s short version: peas are coins, greens are folding money.

German settlers in Pennsylvania ate pork and sauerkraut at New Year’s because they butchered in early winter, and cabbage cut in October had fermented by the holidays. Greek families cut vasilopita with a coin inside, after a legend that St. Basil returned his people’s valuables baked into bread. Japan’s osechi is packed in tiered boxes, and the small dried sardines, once used to fertilize rice paddies, stand for a good harvest. Toso, a spiced medicinal sake, is drunk to flush away last year’s ills.