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Open Doors & Mountain Lore... New Year’s in Appalachia

In the quiet hours just before midnight, when the world is in-between years, the residents of Appalachia listen to their elders and ancestors, and to the wisdom they passed down around coal camps and kitchen fires. Everyone in the mountains knows how you greet the new year is how the new year treats you.

New Year’s isn’t just a celebration here; it’s a ritual where the unseen matters just as much as the seen. With a mixture of cultures intertwining such as Scotts-Irish, German, Welsh, and various Native American tribes, there is no shortage of superstition or tradition here to guide you into the New Year. 

The simplest and easiest tradition is to open your front and back doors at midnight. This ushers out the air of the old year and welcomes in the new. Then the first person who crosses the threshold into the house should be a tall, dark man. It can be someone who lives in the house but only if they were not already in the house when the clock struck midnight.  This tradition comes from the Scottish Highlands, and this is a way to ensure you have good luck over the coming year.

There are also some things you should and should not do over the new year transition. On New Year’s Eve, you prep your house by cleaning out your pantry and making sure it is fully stocked to ensure food prosperity over the next year. But while you are dusting, which you definitely should be doing, don’t dust away any spider webs. Spider webs mean your house won’t starve. 

Take all your blankets outside and air them out while beating them with a stick. This will knock out all the illnesses and misfortune of the last year and ensure comfortability in the new. Mop your floors, but only from back to front. For extra luck, recite Psalms 23 while doing it. This clears out all the negativity from the house and sets you up for an easy next year. Now that all your chores are done, you can enjoy the celebrations. Measure all the children from their nose to their knees with a string or ribbon, then hang that somewhere it can go undisturbed through the next year to make sure the children have good health. 

Next, you’ll want to light three candles for those loved ones who passed. But do not light them all in the same room or put them in a row, or someone in the house will get burned sometime by March. Finally, you’ll want to cut onions and leave them out in the house to absorb any negativity or toxicity still lingering in the air from the previous year. 

Just before the clock strikes midnight, begin a kiss with someone and hold that kiss through the new year transition. This will ensure you have a solid love life over the next year. If you don’t have a love interest, just peek into the well. Over the midnight hour of the new year, you can see the face of your future love or hear their name echo from the bottom of the well. Once the clock has struck midnight, open your front and back doors, then head outside and bang your pots and pans or shoot guns to scare away any evil spirits or negativity that might try to sneak in while the doors are open. Once the sun rises in the new year, that’s when the most important traditions begin. If you know any Appalachians, then it will come to no surprise to you that most of those traditions involve food. What you are not going to do is clean anything or do laundry. That sets you up to have a laborious year. But what you are going to do is cook and eat.

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One dish always served on New Year’s Day is black-eyed peas, or Hoppin Johns. They are usually served with some kind of pork coating to add flavor.

This tradition traces back to the civil war when northern soldiers ransacked farms and took all the food they could find, but they thought the peas were animal food, so they left them behind. When the residents came back, those black-eyed peas sustained them through the winter, and they came to be seen as a means of prosperity and protection.

Another important food dish is cabbage or mashed potatoes with silver coins mixed in them.

Whoever receives the coin in their portion will have good luck and fortune in the coming year. You also will want to have a hearty piece of cornbread to ensure honest and steady work all year long.

Not all food traditions are about meals, though. To ensure your household always has what it needs, place seven pennies into a potato. Then put the potato in a tin can and hide the can in the back of the cabinet. Then to ensure your house has blessings and protection all year, stick a gold-tipped needle into the top of an egg, then bury that egg upright in the front yard. Then just to cover all your bases, keep a silver coin in your wallet or purse to make sure you are never hurting for money. Then walk the boundary of your property and smack the corners with the branch of a willow to keep away misfortune. Use a Hawthorn branch to prevent lightning strikes or thieves. 

These traditions may not be scientifically proven, but it doesn’t make them less real to those that live here. Maybe that’s the magic of Appalachia: the stories and voices we carry forward of our ancestors. Every new year doesn’t just start with the bang of shot guns, but with the whispers of these voices. As long as we keep telling their stories acting out their traditions, the magic and luck of the mountains never really leave us. We carry it with us even when we move away.

So, if you are looking to kick this new year off right, maybe remember to clean out your pantry and open the doors. See what blessings come in to find you.

Happy New Year, I’ll bang an extra pot for you this year.

Meet the author

Lacey Williams is a researcher from the Appalachian foothills in the United States, where she was raised on a farm and on tales of haints, hollers, and things that go bump in the woods. A certified cryptozoology investigator and historian specializing in regional folklore, she studies how myth and memory shape Appalachian identities. When she’s not digging through archives or interviewing locals about strange sightings, she’s writing, working a day job as a certified medical coder, and helping build the Cryptid Women’s Society community.
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