Looking for good luck and prosperity in 2025? Eat black-eyed peas with collard greens – or cabbage – and a slice of cornbread on New Year’s Day.

“According to historian and food scholar Adrian Miller, black-eyed peas represent coins, collard greens represent paper money and cornbread represents gold,” the Food Network states. “Some say you’ll have the best chance at luck if you eat exactly 365 black-eyed peas, one for each day of the year.”

The New York Times states that areas influenced by the British are eating collards or kale today. In Louisiana, where there’s a stronger German influence, people eat cabbage. 

Though historians differ on how the tradition started, it is tied to Black history. One belief is that black-eyed peas became a lucky symbol after Confederates survived a winter by eating the peas. Others say it started when enslaved people ate black-eyed peas on Jan. 1, 1863 to celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation, which abolished slavery, the Food Network states. 

“Black-eyed peas were seen as a throwaway food for enslaved people and livestock. The crop was brought by enslaved Africans in the 1600s as they were transported to the Americas,” the Food Network states. “West Africans have long considered black-eyed peas a good luck charm that warded off evil spirits, and they are often served on holidays and birthdays.”

The tradition has “lived on because it’s fun, and it speaks to aspiration,” Miller told the New York Times. “You always hope that no matter what your condition is, that there’s always a brighter future.” 

Today, “like many other Southern and Black families, we will have a bowl of black-eyed peas, collard greens and cornbread to start the new year off right,” Alexandra Foster wrote in the Food Network article. “As my dad says, ‘Tradition and culture. It’s who we are.’”

For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.

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Tammy C. Barney is an award-winning columnist who spent most of her career at two major newspapers, The Times-Picayune and The Orlando Sentinel. She served as a bureau chief, assistant city editor, TV...