I spent New Year’s Day at our duck camp in the Mississippi Delta, where one of our members took the lead on cooking the traditional greens and peas for the New Year’s Day meal. As he was finishing up the cabbage, I asked whether he’d remembered to put a penny in the pot. A perfectly obvious question, I thought. An elder Currence had passed the suggestion/admonition along to my mother when I was very young, and as I understood it, the penny was supposed to give those who at the greens a kind of monetary superpower in the coming year. I’d never questioned it, assuming it was normal in all houses. But now, seeing Kirk’s face, I knew my assumption had been completely off.
 

Tradition notwithstanding, when I was a kid, the whole thing had created a terrible paradox for me. As we partook of the “wealth” portion of the New Year’s Day meal, I remember thinking I was violating an important life tenet.  “John McDonald Currence, do not put that quarter in your mouth, or you’ll be putting the fingers of everyone who has ever touched it in there too.” Why, on New Year’s Day, was I supposed to forget that particular rule and dig into the “filth cabbage” for good fortune?

Meanwhile, back at the duck camp, my question to Kirk about the penny led to a discussion on all New Year's superstitions: foods, beliefs, etc. One friend’s family ate field peas, while another’s had hoppin’ John, one for health, the other for luck. One’s family ate collards, another turnip greens. I was surprised to learn that plates in North Mississippi were painfully devoid of cornbread on January 1. Cornbread was a staple at our house, although I am not sure why, nor am I sure that there is any real answer to why any of these things are eaten for New Year's. All I can figure is that this is the intersection, or perhaps collision, of tradition and superstition. Whatever the case may be, I’m still not entirely convinced that my parents weren’t just trying to screw with me on the whole “money in the mouth”/New Year's Day greens thing. I mean, what’s a penny worth, anyway? Maybe next year I’ll just skip the greens and go straight to sticking money in my mouth.