Peace and prosperity and indicates what is to come throughout the year.

End and Beginning
December 31st and January 1st symbolizes the End and a New Beginning. Out with the old, in with the new! Wnat is your New Year's Resolution?

If you survive it, how do you celebrate the New Year? Doing it with a bang can prove to be fatal. The above photo demonstrates how dangerous shooting and exploding fireworks, and I love shooting, can be. I do not know who fired the round, but the hole and the bullet is located directly under the R on the hood of my 68 Chevy. From the trajectory of the round and new year day, you can see the bullet fell from the sky, most likely from shooting to celebrate the new year. Just imagine a person instead of a hood.

Watch Night Services
The last church service in the old year and the first for the new year. Considered a great way to end and begin the new year.

Blackeyed Peas, rice (Hopin John) and good ole fashion cornbread
Boy, I am getting hungry just thinking about it. A New Year's Day meal, considered to bring good luck. This new years dish also kept African fed during the civil war and interesting enoungh was considered worthless cowpeas by Yankee soldiers, they did not eat them nor did they destroy them, amongst the many crops destroyed to weaken rebel soldiers.

Dried Blackeyed peas in your wallet or purse
Brings extra money for the new year. I always thought of the peas as pennies and greens as dollars

Collars, Mustards or Turnips Greens
Eaten on New Year's day to bring money.

Kissing at midnight
What's done at midnight, new year's eve, is a good omen. Make sure you are kissing the right person.

First Footing
New Year's day, "Do not allow a woman to be the first person to enter your house", it is bad luck. It is believed, the first person to set-foot in your house should be a good man w/a sprig of evergreen. I keep forgetting my evergreen.

Do Not wash on New Years Day!
It is bad luck and believed to wash-out a family member. You can add sweeping. I guess that could work in your favor for a family member you do not like.

Loud noises, Bell Ringing, Fireworks and Shooting
At 12 midnight, on New Year's eve, "Shooting in the air" and making loud noises at the stroke of midnight is believed to have scared demonic forces away. Safety first, what goes up, must come down. I have a bullet lodge in the hood of my truck today. I leave there to remind me to take cover on New Years Eve.

Cleaning house and outstanding debts
Not good to carry them over into the new year. Not a bad idea for the U.S budget, is it? Start out on a clean slate.

Good luck, take appropriated cover and HAPPY NEW YEAR! Why and Proof?

Folklore and Superstitions