What’s Luck Got to Do With It?

They’re hot. They’ve got history. They’re good with ham. Pondering a New Year’s tradition.

Today is the day where everybody who received new 2018 Cats-Gone-Wild picture calendars from their mother-in-law for Christmas proudly get to hang them up for all to see. You lucky dogs. (See what I did there?)

Speaking of luck, today is also the day we open the pantry, fish out that neglected bag of dried black eyed peas, and start to soaking. For everybody knows that if you don’t eat yourself a big ‘ol bowl of southern pods, you are headed for a disastrous year.

Many people swear by this tradition, but how many know the history (or perhaps legend) behind eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day for good luck? For those keeping score at home, I will briefly give you the cliff-notes:

In the winter of 1864, as Sherman’s army was laying waste to everything in its path, just about every family left standing was hurting for food. As the dust settled and the soldiers moved on to another town, survivors came out of hiding and began searching and gathering up anything that remained to help them live. About all they found was the one thing Sherman figured nobody, not even Rebs would touch. What they found was plenty of black-eyed peas.

To most people back then, pods of any variety were considered more animal food than people food (pig feed to be precise) and nobody’s first choice for the dinner table (my ten-year old son would throw all vegetables into this category if he had his way.) To really put into perspective how unpopular human consumption of any pod-type food has been throughout history, think back to the parable of The Prodigal Son, and what he found himself craving after hitting rock bottom. (Luke 15:16) This little detail was thrown into the story to make plain just how far this once proud young man had fallen.

Suddenly, black eyed peas tasted dang good and were all the rage, and people were happy to have them. As a bitter year ended and a new one began, demoralized southern families took inventory of whatever they had left and considered themselves lucky.

Fact, fiction, or a little bit of both, there is a lesson to be learned:

Sometimes, you just don’t know how good you had it until it’s gone.

Stinks that it has to be that way. Wish it wasn’t.

2017 has been a tough one for a lot of us. For some, down right criminal. Personally, as my wife was putting up her new cat-calendar this morning, I asked if I could keep the old one to use as toilet paper.

It’s been that kind of year.

But as I eat my lucky black-eyed peas this New Year’s Day, I can’t help but picture those families from so long ago gathered around their own dinner tables, doing their best to pick up the pieces and move on. Tables where once full, robust families with bright futures sat, but now held too many empty chairs.

I can almost see the smiles of hope and encouragement mommas and daddies showed to their children as they passed what little food they had around. I can hear their voices as they say grace. They are not prayers for luck, but prayers of thanks. Thanks for what they still had instead of what they didn’t.

They ate black-eyed peas and considered themselves blessed.

Today, in a world that seems to encourage only more, it is so easy to lose sight of what we already have, what is truly important, and how blessed we all are.

On this first day of 2018, look around your table and take a moment to recognize how much you have. Look into the faces you hold dear, and take inventory. Smile when you pass them the bowl of black-eyed peas and remember-luck has nothing to do with it.

(Unless you get the last piece of cornbread.)