Meal Magic

It's a tradition of mine to head over to some good friends' house for New Year's Eve dinner. One of my high school chums married a gal from the Florida panhandle, and she cooks a traditional Southern New Year's Eve meal of ham, black-eyed peas, and collard greens, a topic I wrote about many years ago.

The second best thing about the meal, the first being is that it's really delicious, is that it serves as sympathetic magic- the green leafy vegetables, through the Law of Similarity, resemble greenback dollars, so eating them presages prosperity in the coming year. The black-eyed peas have a less clear 'magical' effect (besides their ability to sing hours after they've been eaten)- is the fact that they swell an omen of a swelling bank account, or do they look like coins? Beans being a cheap source of protein which can be stored for a long time, it just makes sense to eat them, especially in the winter, when fresh food is not so easily obtained.

While the sympathetic magic angle is interesting, the real magic is having a good meal with old friends... and that's the best tradition of all. Happy New Year, dear friends!