Coins under the plates on New Year’s? Yeah, it’s a tradition some Southerners follow.

To improve your happiness, health and finances in 2021, suspend your disbeliefs and put a heaping portion of good humor on your plate.

Yes, cabbage can improve health. Yes, onions can predict wet months so we can plant crops and plan events at proper times. Yes, money jingling in pockets on New Year’s Day can assure a more financially secure year

Most assuredly, gobble down lots of that food version of a black eye, preferably seasoned with hog jowl.

All these must-dos and must-haves for New Year’s are nothing new. They are age-old traditions and superstitions that go back as far as Southerners have been recording their cultures.

I wasn’t going to write about New Year’s traditions and beliefs but had planned more of a think piece on our 2020 pandemic, politics and social awakenings. But then I decided, who wants to read more of that? Opinionating and reflecting is everywhere, en masse.

Next I decided to see what the Mississippi Coast was like a century or so ago.

I found my bingo in a Dec. 31, 1910, article in this newspaper titled “The Close of a Great Year.” Just like I’m in no mood to dissect 2020, I will not dissect this close-to-home, end-of-year reflection:

“It has been a busy and somewhat turbulent year with many ups and downs. The scientific and political world especially has seen many changes. Thrones have tottered and fallen and great political parties have trembled in the balance...

“In this country the greatest discussion has revolved around the problem of the high cost of living, a condition generally attributed to oppressive and unjust measures from the ‘man higher up’ and it has culminated in the defeat from Maine to the Pacific Coast of the Republican party.

“All America will watch with absorbing interest the attitude and actions of the Democrats in Congress now almost in full power again except for the executive office.”

Hmmm, interesting. That’s my only comment as I return to New Year’s traditions.

Bring out those shiny dimes, salted and quartered onions, smoked hog jowl, heads of cabbage and pots of black-eyed peas. Call them tradition, superstition, good for a laugh, mere bunk or poppycock, it doesn’t matter. They are still as ingrained in our New Year’s celebration as staying up to watch the clock strike midnight.

Can coins in our pockets and under our dinner plates really improve our finances? I hedge my bet on that one. In the 1980s I first wrote about putting a shiny dime under each New Year’s Day dinner plate, more coins under the mat of the front door, and even more jingling in our pockets. I’ve done it myself since then and put out a tempting basket of coins for guests.

But the main crux of New Year’s is turning over a new leaf. You’d be wise to make that a cabbage leaf.

Today, many who live on the Gulf Coast would not let January 1 pass without eating heaping spoonfuls of cabbage and greens, particularly collards. Tucked somewhere in a kitchen cabinet is a shriveled cabbage leaf that my late friend and editor, Pic Firmin, gave me in 2010.

Pic believed my new home needed all the good vibes it could get, so he bagged up a leftover leaf from his New Year’s cooking and handed it to me. I treasure it, of course, with our without the luck it may have brought me.

Why cabbage? After all, the cabbage plant is not native to America. It was brought here by European colonists, but it didn’t take long for people who settled in the Gulf South to add a new meaning to the leafy green vegetable.

Originally, the tradition was to eat it for good health, but today we more commonly hear we should eat cabbage, collard greens, spinach and their ilk because they are green, thus representative of money.

I’ll happily settle for both: $ and health.

Now to that pretty little pea with the black eye.

Those black-eyed peas are lucky

When et on New Year’s Day;

You’ll always have sweet ‘taters,

And possum come your way.

This once humble fare is most often credited to the enslaved and the poor early Southerners who also understood the flavor importance of smoked hog jowl. This bacony-like meat is actually the cheek of the pig, and was added to the luck, health and money traditions of what to eat on New Year’s Day.

Now, about that onion as a weather forecaster for the coming year: Take a big onion of any variety and on New Year’s Eve cut it in 12 lengthwise wedges. Take the largest section from each wedge and line them up in a row of 12 with their cups facing upward. They look a bit like like little boats in a row, with each piece representing a calendar month, starting with January.

Into each of the 12, place 1 teaspoon of salt. Many prefer to set them in muffin tins outside, protected from the weather. On New Year’s Day check your onion pieces. Any that are watery represent wet months. If the salt is dry or just a little crusty, that will be a dry month.

Would a wet August onion cup represent a hurricane, I wonder?

The thing to remember about New Year’s Day is that you are supposed to do things you will want to do the rest of the year. That means don’t pick quarrels. Likewise, don’t trip, fall, get angry, spend every hour working, be depressed, yell at the kids or pets, overspend, spend all day on the computer or smart phone. You fill in the blanks.

A few specific warnings exist, too, like not cutting your nails on New Year’s Day because you’ll be cutting away all your good luck. Or, no matter how pretty your calendar, don’t put it up until Jan. 1. Also never carry ashes out of your house on New Year’s Day to avoid bad luck.

Don’t sweep out the house, lest one of your family not be there a year from now. Save all those kinds of chores for Jan. 2, including ironing and laundry.

After decades of research, my favorite NY tradition remains the one where you open all your doors and windows at midnight to let all the bad luck out and invite all the good luck in. Superstitious? Nawh! I just like the fresh air.

Kat Bergeron, a veteran feature writer specializing in Gulf Coast history and sense of place, is retired from the Sun Herald. She writes the Mississippi Coast Chronicles column as a freelance correspondent. Reach her at BergeronKat@gmail.com or at Southern Possum Tales, P.O. Box 33, Barboursville, VA 22923.