New Year's Foods of East and West

Meaning of New Year's Day in the East

For Asians, particularly northeast Asians, New Year's is a time of connectedness with the family, in the present times the family refers to the nuclear family but traditionally the entire patriarchally linked extended family was part of the on-going celebrations. New Year's was a time of silence and reverence for saying goodbye reverently to the old year of sustenance and greeting the New Year with enthusiasm and the hope of abundance and good health.

Different countries in northeast Asia (China, Korea and Japan) have distinctive foods for celebrating the New Year. Following is a food item traditionally included in the New Year's celebration for greeting a New Year.

Rice cake soup in Korea

Rice cakes are an essential part of celebrations in Korean holiday festivities, birthday celebrations, weddings, ancestor veneration ceremonies, Chuseok (Thanksgiving) and of course Seollal (lunar New Year's day). Traditionally Koreans did not celebrate their individual birthdays, formerly criticized as being selfish as it reflected the western attitude of 'individualism'. Koreans traditionally celebrated their birthdays collectively on Seollal when everyone was served a bowl of rice cake soup (떡국) and after consuming the soup, everyone turned a year older together.

Osechi in Japan

In Japan it was traditional bad luck to cook during the first three days of the new year and so special boxes known as juubako (重箱) were desiged to hold special traditional foods to be eaten during those three days of reflecting on the new year. Each of the foods known as osechi-ryouri (御節料理 or お節料理) symbolize some wish for the New Year - long life, abudance in the harvest, health, and more. [For more detailed look at many of the osechi-ryouri dishes and their meanings go the blogsite Japan On-line]. Black beans in a sweetened soysauce symbolize health, anchovies symbolize abundant harvest, roe symbolize fertility and family prosperity (the meaning comes from Japanese homophonic word play) ... to name a few.

Dimsum in China

Dimsum literally means "to touch your heart." It consists of a variety of dumplings, steamed dishes and other goodies, functioning much like French hors d'oeuvres but is much more universal - they are snacks for travelers, a nibble with tea and as meals for the busy. When food is prepared for New Year's celebrations, foods have symbolic meanings usually about prosperity, good luck and counting money. Two kinds of dumplings eaten on New Year's day are jau gok ( 油角) which is believed to resemble ancient Chinese gold ingots, or wealth; similarly in northern China dumplings were prepared with "luck" inside them, and because the dumplings were small and resembled silver ingots, they represent prosperity. In the same way, the ingredients of dimsum or complimentary dishes all have wishes for the New Year. Fish (魚yú) is a homophone for "surpluses"(餘yú), leek (蒜苗/大蒜 suàn miáo/dà suàn) makes it a homophone for "calculating (money)" (算 suàn), and noodles by their appearance represent wishes for longevity.

 

Jau gok (Chinese: 油角; pinyin: yóujiăo)	The main Chinese new year dumpling. It is believed to resemble ancient Chinese gold ingots (simplified Chinese: 金元宝; traditional Chinese: 金元寶; pinyin: jīnyuánbǎo)
jiaozi (dumplings) (Chinese: 餃子)	Eaten traditionally in northern China because the preparation is similar to packaging luck inside the dumpling, which is later eaten. The dumpling resembles a silver ingot, or money. The symbolism is prosperity.

Jau gok (Chinese: 油角; pinyin: yóujiăo)	The main Chinese new year dumpling. It is believed to resemble ancient Chinese gold ingots (simplified Chinese: 金元宝; traditional Chinese: 金元寶; pinyin: jīnyuánbǎo)
jiaozi (dumplings) (Chinese: 餃子)	Eaten traditionally in northern China because the preparation is similar to packaging luck inside the dumpling, which is later eaten. The dumpling resembles a silver ingot, or money. The symbolism is prosperity.

Foods celebrating New Year's Day in some western countries

Grapes in Mexico

For New Year's celebrations people in Mexico herald in the New Year at the stroke of midnight with 12 grapes often piled into a glass of margarita, a flute of champagnes or even sparkling cider - a sidra for toasting in the New Year and then within its first minute the hasty consumption of all 12 grapes which symbolize having luck in the upcoming 12 months (of course each grapes symbolizes a month). Festivities like in any country are not limited to food but are represented by the colors one wears when celebrating. Green clothing attracts a year of good health; red underwear brings love while yellow underwear brings wealth. But of course not all colors can be worn as the wearer must choose which is most important to him or her. But bring on the New Year and down with the 12 grapes.

Oliebollen in Holland

Oliebollen are small donuts (commonly called Dutch Donuts by Brits) which are for celebrating the New Year. Beleived to have first come from Germanic tribes in the Netherlands during the Yule (the period between December 26 and January 6), the donuts were made as an offering to the Germanic goddess Perchta and other evil spirits who were about in the mid-winter sky. To appease the spirits, food was offered. Much of the food contained deep-fried dough which was loaded with fat and thus oiling the sword of the evil Perchta so that her attacks against humans would result in the sword sliding harmlessly off the people who ate the oily bread. So not surprisingly, oliebollen literally means "oil or lard balls".

Focaccia and Banitza in Bulgaria

Ancient Romans baked their flatbreads in the ashes of the fireplace, and the name focaccia reflects this early beginning of the bread panis focacius, which is derived from the Latin focus meaning “center” and also “fireplace”, significant as the fireplace was the center of the house. Nowadays focaccia has evolved into many different kinds of breads with various seasonings and glutinous flours based on the culture where it is being baked. But in Bulgaria, focaccia has taken on a significant cultural meaning for the New Year. A coin in placed in the pan of flatbread and then once the bread has been cut and distributed, whoever gets the piece with the coin in it is said to have particularly good fortune for the coming year.

Banitza is a Bulgarian pasty made of whisked eggs, white cheese and filo pastry and can be made savory (usually) by adding spinach or leeks or even sweet for breakfast by dipping in yogurt and eating with fruit. This traditional Bulgarian bread is popular on certain occasions, particularly New Year's Eve when lucky charms such as coins or small symbolic objects like a dogwood branch with a bud for symbolizing health or longevity are hidden in the bread and found by a person who be richly blessed with New Year's luck. In more recent times, wishes written on paper notes which are wrapped in foil are hidden in the bread. Wishes for happiness, health and success throughout the New Year are most popular. 

Cotechino con lenticchie in Italy

Lentils play an important traditional for zampone and cotechino (deboned pig legs stuffed with pork rinds, sausage and spices). Lentils are a required item for celebrating New Year's Eve as the shape brings to mind tiny coins which people symbolically eat in hopes of attaining cash during the new year. The zampone and cotechino are memories of a past time of poverty when the now precious food item was invented due to a shortage of food. So together, the lentil "coins" and the memories of past poverty are iconic foods for symbolizing prosperity in the upcoming year.

I thank my students Yuna Jung and Min Jeong Kim for outlining this presentation and selecting very appropriate pictures to share as cultural examples. A note from myself on this presentation - I find it very interesting that many of the food selected are based on flour recipes. Maybe some research needs to be done on what percent of traditional celebratory foods require flour of some for the making. Could be very interesting outcome.

Paratroopers of the 101st Airborne

Lately I've been doing book exchanges with colleagues who are interested in history and the effects of war. My most recent is Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers about E Company, 506th Regiment, 101St Airborne who first parachuted over Normandy, who often spearheaded attacks on thinly guarded front lines and finally ended up in Hitler's Eagle Nest where blatant looting and wild drinking closed the war, and where casualties were no longer from gun fire but car accidents resulting from the inebriated state.

For an excellent book review, click here.

The name of the book Band of Brothers is the result of specialized training with the same group of men who were forced under dire stress by their unanimous hatred of their company commander, forced night marches where they learned to recognize each other's shadows, and fierce and on-going combat. They were faced with the ugliness of war, destruction, death, and where nothing was worse than letting one's buddy down. And through the grime, filth and blood they formed the closest brotherhood they would ever know, one founded on selflessness and the intimate trust that comes when one knows he can depend on another to do his utmost for his buddies' best interests. And as the book states, by the time they had gotten through the Battle of the Bulge they were a band of brothers who would be linked to one another through life from their shared horrific experiences.

The men of E Company passed through many countries as the war progressed, and each country was stereotyped by their treatment/reaction/indifference to the troops. In general the men had widely different perceptions and experiences with the German people, the supposed enemy. Some found reasons to reinforce their hatred, others loved the country and its people, but nearly everyone ended up changing his mind about their preconceived ideas of the Germans as all of them had some kind of fascination with the German people.

"The standard story of how the American GI reacted to the foreign people he met during the course of WWII runs like this: He felt the Arabs were despicable, liars, thieves, dirty, awful, without a redeeming feature. The Italians were liars, thieves, dirty, wonderful, with many redeeming features, but never to be trusted. The rural French were sullen, slow, and ungrateful while the Parisians were rapacious, cunning, indifferent to whether they were cheating the Germans or Americans. The British people were brave, resourceful, quaint, reserved, dull. The Dutch were, as noted, regarded as simply wonderful in every way [but the average GI never was in Holland, only the airborne.] The story ends up thus: wonder of wonders, the average GI found that the people he liked best, identified most closely with, enjoyed being with, were the Germans. Clean, hard-working, disciplined, educated, middle-class in their tastes and lifestyles (many GIs noted that so far as they could tell the only people in the world who regarded a flush toilet and soft toilet paper as a necessity were the Germans and the Americans), the Germans seemed to many American soldiers as "just like us."" (p248-9)

The book ends with the E Company running riot in Hitler's Eagle Nest but where the incessant drinking in the final days of the war became a bore and the men ached for action or a speedy return home. Finally, on November 30, 1945 the 101st was inactivated and E Company no longer existed. But the brotherhood remained. And almost annually a reunion takes place where many of the former paratroopers get together and re-cement their bonds with one another. Not all have faired well. While all suffered some physical or other adverse traumas of war, the majority were able to adjust back to civilian life. A small number became dysfunctional, three became wealthy, but the vast majority became builders of society.

In the final chapter on the "Postwar Careers" of the men from E Company, it was noted that most men took advantage of the GI Bill of Rights and went to college, became educated and participated actively in contributing to the social, and for some, economic welfare of the US after the war-torn years. And as Ed Tipper, one of the paratroopers, sums it up in regard to why so many of the soldiers returned to be teachers, he said, "Is it accidental that so many ex-paratroopers from E Company became teachers? Perhaps for some men a period of violence and destruction at one time attracts them to look for something creative as a balance in another part of life."