Round these parts, it is the custom to eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. It is supposed to bring you good luck. Not that I believe in such foolishness—it’s a fun cultural tradition, and I happen to like the legumes, so it’s a good excuse to have plenty fixed up. Some folks say you just gotta have a serving, and others say you need to have one pea for each lucky day you want to have. I’d always been taught it was a Texas thing. T’ain’t.
According to our friends over at the ever knowledgeable Wikipedia, it is a tradition of the entire South (that’s with a capital “S,” mind you). It apparently gained wide popularity in the Civil War (aka “the War of Northern Aggression” to the most devout of the pea eaters), but it is even older than that. Turns out a group of Jewish immigrants brought it with them to the new world of Georgia around 1730.
