9 Lucky Foods to Eat on New Year's Day (2024)

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9 Lucky Foods to Eat on New Year's Day? ›

Black-Eyed Peas

Traditionally paired with collard greens and cornbread, black-eyed peas are a staple New Year's good luck food. The peas symbolize coins, and practices of consuming these legumes around celebrations date back to Ancient Egypt.

Black-Eyed Peas

Traditionally paired with collard greens and cornbread, black-eyed peas are a staple New Year's good luck food. The peas symbolize coins, and practices of consuming these legumes around celebrations date back to Ancient Egypt.

Greens, pork, and cornbread, as well as black-eyed peas, cowpeas, or beans, are some of the typical symbolic foods served on New Year's Day. When planning your dinner menu, add the Southern foods that some say bring good luck and avoid those that may do just the opposite in the new year.

If you want to keep with Southern tradition, eating black-eyed peas and collard greens on New Year's Day will supposedly bring good luck and prosperity, respectively, in the months ahead.

Along with black-eyed peas, some cultures believe that grapes, noodles, pork, or pomegranates can be considered lucky when eaten on New Year's.

It's said that you shouldn't eat winged fowl (read: birds like turkey or chicken), bottom feeders (like shrimp or catfish), or any seafood that swims backward or side to side (like lobster or crab).

Originating in Spain, the tradition of eating grapes at the stroke of midnight is believed to welcome good fortune and prosperity in the new year. It's known as "Las doce uvas de la suerte," or "The twelve grapes of luck,” and each of the 12 grapes represents a month of the new year.

Green. It is one of the 10 lucky colors for years that offers growth, renewal, and prosperity. Wearing green or displaying green decorations is believed to bring good luck and positive energy to the home.

Another superstition, this is American folklore: don't wash clothes on New Year's Day. If you clean clothes on Jan. 1, you may wash away a member of your family in the coming year — meaning someone will die. Not to mention sending a year of good fortune down the drain.

What are you not supposed to do on New Year's Day? ›

Don't Clean the House on New Year's Day - You will wash away any good luck coming your way.

Chicken, Squab, or Anything with Wings

If it has wings, it can fly away - and that's what legend says about chicken on New Years. Eating chicken can cause your good luck to fly away, and well - we definitely don't want that. Make that Roasted Chicken later in January, just to be safe.

Rice symbolizes prosperity. "They swell — increase in size — and are numerous,” Miller says. In the U.S., Hoppin' John, a traditional Southern dish of red peas and rice, is traditionally eaten on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. It is believed to bring good luck into the new year.

This eastern European tradition of eating cabbage on New Year's—either as a dish or as cabbage rolls—is meant to signify luck, particularly on the financial side of things. People who eat cabbage on New Year's believe that it'll help them make more money in the year ahead.

According to lore, the forward movement of pigs when they root around for food on the ground signifies a “moving forward” trajectory in life, and thus pork is a favorable meat to enjoy to start the year off on the right track.