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Gammerstang commented on the word hoppinjohn
(noun) - Black-eyed peas cooked with hog jowl, the traditional New Year's dinner in many well-to-do families who would not eat such coarse food on any other day . . . In Civil War days, some planters who had nothing to eat but black-eyed peas at a New Year's dinner were lucky enough to regain their fortunes, and later on they somehow connected this good luck with New Year's hoppinjohn . . . It is considered very important in some districts to have black-eyed peas for dinner on New Year's Day. I have known country folk who rode a long way to get these peas for a New Year's dinner, even though they did not care particularly for black-eyed peas, and seldom ate them at any other time.
--Vance Randolph's Ozark Superstitions, 1947
January 16, 2018