The start of the new year marks a time for beginnings and renewal, and for many of us, it represents a time for a clean slate. We begin a new diet, join a new gym, pick up yoga for the first time, and promise well keep these resolutions going strong in order to achieve the longevity, health, and prosperity we are seeking in life. If youre hoping to start the new year off right, there are many good-luck foods to eat on New Years Eve that are believed to bring about good tidings in the year to come.
That being said, there are also some foods youll want to avoid if youre hoping to get off on the right foot. When youre ready to pop open the Champagne, be sure to check out this list of superstitious, bad-omen foods so you may avoid them at all costs, and therefore kick off the new year with the best luck and fortune possible.
As the clock strikes midnight and the New Year arrives, many celebrants eagerly look forward to their first meal of the year. The festive feasts and traditional dishes vary across cultures and regions, often based on symbolic beliefs, auspicious omens or lighthearted superstitions. A frequently pondered question is – can you eat turkey on New Year’s Day? Let’s delve into this holiday culinary quandary and uncover the origins, significance and reasoning behind the customs.
An Overview of New Year’s Food Traditions
While New Year’s Day is not as food-focused as Thanksgiving, many cultures and families implement special menus to ring in the year. In the southern United States, dishes like black-eyed peas, greens, cornbread, and hog jowls are served for prosperity and luck. The Spanish consume twelve grapes at midnight – one for each stroke of the clock. Greeks enjoy Vasilopita – a bread or cake containing a hidden coin meant for the finder’s good fortune. Scandinavians feast on herring and boiled cod, while the Japanese opt for soba noodles as a symbol of longevity. Tamales, lentils, pickled herring, and pork feature across many traditions as well.
The Role of Superstition in New Year’s Meals
Folklore and superstition greatly influence the culinary selections of this holiday. Certain ingredients are thought to either attract good luck or ward off bad luck in the coming year. For instance, greens represent wealth, fish symbolizes abundance, and ring-shaped foods suggest the cycle of the year. On the contrary, lobsters and chickens are avoided since they move backwards. And lamentably for turkey lovers, this fowl is also considered detrimental luck.
Is Turkey Off Limits on New Year’s Day?
As per superstition, turkey is not an ideal choice for the New Year’s table. The belief stems from the bird’s tendency to scratch backwards while foraging, representing misfortune and backward progress in the new year. However, many modern hosts dismiss this belief and happily serve turkey and other poultry. After enjoying turkey on Christmas or Thanksgiving, having tasty leftovers allows hosts to enjoy effortless feasts.
While deeply ingrained in some cultures these beliefs are mainly lighthearted for most celebrants today. The choice of dishes ultimately depends on preference availability, and honoring family rituals.
Exploring the Pros and Cons of Turkey
Let’s weigh the advantages and possible concerns around serving turkey on New Year’s Day:
Pros:
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Turkey is a festive, celebratory meat befitting the holiday.
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It provides a centerpiece main course and feeds a crowd.
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Turkey sandwiches and leftovers are convenient for New Year’s Day meals.
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Dark turkey meat offers tryptophan to potentially promote restful sleep after late-night revelry.
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Turkey is leaner and healthier than red meats like ham or beef.
Cons:
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The superstition around backwards scratching persists among some traditionalists.
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Guests may tire of turkey if they just had it at Christmas or Thanksgiving.
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Preparing a whole turkey is labor-intensive compared to other holiday dishes.
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Potential food safety concerns exist around improperly thawed or undercooked turkey.
Navigating Guest Preferences and Dietary Needs
When planning New Year’s menus, hosts should consider their guests’ dietary preferences or restrictions. While most general celebrations include meat-centric dishes, offering vegetarian, vegan, or gluten-free options ensures everyone can partake. Appetizers, sides, desserts, and non-alcoholic beverages should provide inclusive choices as well. Communicating with guests ahead of time prevents awkward situations or unfulfilled expectations later.
Getting Creative with New Year’s Turkey Dishes
For turkey-loving hosts determined to uphold tradition or use leftovers, creative recipes can give this poultry a fresh, festive New Year’s flair. Consider….
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Hearty turkey chili – with beans, veggies, and spice.
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Turkey tetrazzini – with egg noodles, mushrooms, and sherry.
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Turkey pot pie – encased in fluffy biscuits or puff pastry.
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Simple turkey sandwiches – on potato rolls with cranberry relish.
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Turkey salad wraps – mixed with avocado, greens, and bacon.
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Open-faced turkey melts – with tomato, arugula, and melty cheese.
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Turkey soup – simmered with veggies, pasta or rice.
Prioritizing Togetherness on New Year’s Day
Whether adhering to ancestral customs or creating new food traditions, New Year’s Day ultimately represents a fresh start and hopes for the future. Focus less on dated superstitions and more on preparing thoughtful, delicious meals that foster time together with loved ones. Provide a spread of nourishing foods that make all your guests feel welcomed, appreciated, and ready to embrace the promise of the new year ahead. With this spirit of intentionality, no ingredient – not even the contested turkey – can mar the joy of this holiday.
Lobster and crab
While surf and turf is pretty much the classiest dinner combination there is, its recommended you skip lobster on New Years Eve because the crustaceans move backward and this is considered bad luck, notes Smithsonian Magazine. The superstition can be traced back to Austria and Eastern Europe, where its believed that eating anything on New Years Eve or Day that moves backward means you will experience setbacks in the year to come. Although lobsters do swim forwards, according to One Kind Planet, they can swim very quickly backward when they sense danger from a predator.
Other crustacean family members like shrimp and crabs are also considered bad luck as they move from side to side. The only way to truly enjoy surf and turf for your New Years dinner celebration is to eat any seafood that swims in a forward motion, like salmon, which is considered especially lucky because it swims in schools, which promotes prosperity and progress in the year ahead.
The general rule of thumb is that anything that swims or moves forward serves as a lucky entrée on your New Years dinner plate, particularly if the fish has shiny scales, according to Southern Kitchen. Even pickled herring is considered a lucky tradition in Germany and Sweden, and in China, they prefer the whole fish, eyeballs and all.
Whatever fish you decide to celebrate your palate with, youll want to skip the bottom feeders, which include fish like cod, halibut, shrimp, sole, scallops, and bass. Catfish is another bottom feeder to avoid when ringing in the new year, as superstition implies if you feast on catfish, youll be feeding off of scraps for the year to come. Bottom feeders tend to graze along the murky bottom of a lake or ocean, scavenging whatever scraps they can find. This of a bottom-feeding dweller is less than desirable when youre aiming for a healthy, prosperous, and fulfilling new year.
There are lots of colorful foods that are good luck on New Years, like collard greens or tamales, which green and gold colors respectively symbolize wealth and prosperity. Oranges and tangerines are another lucky golden charm, and gifting, displaying, or eating them in China means your year ahead will be chock-full of luck, success, and money.
When piling the luckiest foods onto your New Years plate, youll want to avoid anything white, like tofu, white potatoes, egg whites, rice, and bread, unless the bread is served as a round cake. The superstition surrounding white foods stems from Chinese culture, where white represents death, mourning, and bad fortune, according to How Stuff Works. Chinese people also wear white to funerals, which is where the association with death comes from. If you want to have a lucky and lively new year, its best to avoid white foods at all costs, with the exception of sauerkraut, which is popular among the Pennsylvania Dutch and considered lucky on New Years Eve, especially when paired with pork.
Dating back to the 1700s, long soba noodles have been a traditional New Years Eve delicacy in Japan, as they are believed to promote longevity, health, resilience, and luck at the start of a new year or new month. Noodles have long been a staple in Chinese and Japanese cuisine, and are consumed at breakfast, lunch, and dinner in dishes like chow mein, udon noodle soup, and ramen.
But beware of a long noodle that is cut short or broken in half, as short noodles are a symbol of bad luck in most Asian cultures. In fact, a short or broken noodle symbolizes a shortened lifespan. Another suspicion regarding long and short noodles is that youre not supposed to cut the noodle with your teeth, chopsticks, or whatever utensil youre eating your ramen or udon with. Slurping down the long noodles in their entirety is essential for longevity and luck, (via spot).
Its considered bad luck to bring parsley as a gift to your New Years Eve dinner host, or anyone else for that matter. Dating back to approximately 1600, a superstition arose regarding gifting parsley, particularly when the clock strikes 12 a.m., notes the Darlington & Stockton Times.
Legend has it that a Greek army on their way to battle encountered some donkeys covered in parsley and interpreted the animals as a sign of impending doom (via “25 Essential Herbs You Need to Know”). The army ultimately decided the potential misfortune wasnt worth it and retreated. After that encounter, parsley became associated with death in Greece and was used to decorate wreaths at funerals, as well as placed on top of gravesites to honor the dead, according to Garden Betty. Our Herb Garden also warns against sniffing basil on New Years Eve, as some physicians in the 1500s believed that it invited scorpions into your brain (obviously modern medicine proves otherwise, but if youre already avoiding all of these superstitious foods, it cant hurt to remove basil, too). Perhaps the best thing you can do to solicit good luck in the new year is to steer clear of any herbs on New Years Eve.
While it may not be limited to New Years, slicing into a fresh loaf of artisanal bread and finding a huge, gaping hole is considered to be a very bad omen. And thats not just because making a sandwich with hole-ridden bread is practically impossible. According to ABC News, air pockets in bread are thought to be a symbol of a coffin and a premonition of impending death — either yours or someone you know. Yikes. Hearing that alone is a reason to cut out carbs in the new year.
These cavernous holes are actually referred to as tunneling, per The Bread Guide, and can be caused by a multitude of reasons, such as not kneading the dough enough, being impatient with rising time, or using flour thats too dense. Ultimately, trapped CO2 from the yeast in the bread causes these bready pits of despair. If your bread isnt scored deep enough, the gas cant escape and youll be left with holey bread.
Still, if youre even a wee bit superstitious, perhaps stay away from fresh loaves of bread around New Years Eve. Or you can always just slice the bread horizontally like one big sandwich. If there are any big holes in the loaf, thatll fix the problem.
Poultry and winged fowl
If you dont want your luck to fly away on New Years Eve, then we suggest not eating chicken – or any type of winged fowl, for that matter. As explained by the Victoria Advocate, the superstition goes that winged fowl like chickens or turkey scratch around in the dirt looking for their food, so if you consume these at the start of the year, youll likely be scratching in the dirt looking for food, money, and fortune for the next 12 months.
Eating anything with wings on New Years Eve is also considered bad luck as it could symbolize your happiness flying away. If scratching dirt and flying away is not enough to make you steer clear of winged fowl one night out of the year, then perhaps the fact that chickens and turkeys are known to scratch the dirt while moving backward will help you move forward with your decision to abstain. From chickens to lobsters (see below), any food that moves backward is considered back luck on New Years Eve.
Eating halal food or Arabic food for the day? #shorts #yummy #food
FAQ
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So, when planning your New Year’s feast, you might want to consider alternatives that represent forward momentum and progress, aligning with your aspirations for the year ahead. Chicken, a staple in many diets, becomes a culinary taboo for some on New Year’s Day. This stems from the bird’s habit of scratching backward.
What to eat (and not eat) on New Year’s day?
What to eat (and not eat) on New Year’s Day SLM’s dining editor delves into the holiday’s food-related traditions and lore. Throughout the ages and in every culture, there are customs and superstitions linked to New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. In this country, bubbles are considered good luck, so imbibers toast the new year with champagne.
Can you eat Black Eyed Peas on New Year’s day?
Try your luck with this recipe for a Japanese Cabbage Pancake. Eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day is a time-honored tradition. Black-eyed peas are actually a kind of bean, not to be confused with green peas (or the hip hop band). There are a few different reasons they’re associated with luck on New Year’s Day.
Why do we eat traditional New Year’s Day Foods?
Here are 10 traditional New Year’s Day foods and why we eat them: 1. Pork Pork is a classic New Year’s Day food as it represents prosperity and progress. Pigs are known to be plump, so eating pork is supposed to make someone chunky, not with weight gain, but cash. Pork can also bring progress since pigs “root forward” when they eat.