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A DIFFERENT NEW YEAR'S DAY CELEBRATION Throughout history the New Year has been celebrated in many different ways. Currently most people attend traditional New Year's Eve parties and ring in the New Year with champagne. New Year's Day is usually celebrated with families getting together for a traditional dinner.

My wife's sister, Gerda, was visiting us from Germany for the Christmas holidays. We celebrated Christmas at our house and our plans were to go to my sister Frances in Hollywood for New Year's Day dinner. It is customary in the south to have black-eyed peas with hog jowl and collard greens on New Year's Day. The legend holds that if you eat this combination you will have money all year. I don't know about the money, but the food is really good. My sister had decided to go all out and fix a big dinner including turkey and dressing along with the peas and greens. Now my sister is a very good cook and her turkey would melt in your mouth it was so juicy. I always like giblet gravy with my dressing. It's almost a sin not to have giblet gravy with dressing but she had decided to make brown gravy instead. I was shocked. I would have to force myself to eat, so I did.

Gerda loved a big crowd and was right at home with all the folks there. She had never eaten black-eyed peas before and couldn't get over how good they were. Everyone ate as much as they wanted and sat and lay around trying to get comfortable. This is where the strange part comes in and we added a twist to celebrating the New Year. For some reason the conversation got around to funerals. Gerda said she had never seen a funeral home. She explained that they do not embalm bodies in Germany; they have the funeral right away. Francis asked her if she would like to visit a funeral home and Gerda said yes.

A few of the women got in the car and drove to the nearest funeral home. Let me say here that nobody was drunk, these were just nutty women. The door was open so they walked in and were greeted by a friendly man who asked how he might help them. They explained that Gerda was from Germany and had never seen a funeral home and would he be kind enough to show her around. He said he would be delighted and said to follow him. He took them through the entire place including the room where embalming took place and explained how it was done and why. He explained how they try to use lighting to make the body look better and even brought out a casket with a body to show them how they direct the lighting so the corpse looks good. He explained how cremation works and how the body to be cremated is wrapped and drops though the bottom of the casket on its way to be cremated and the casket stays. They were all amazed and thanked the man for being so kind and taking the time to show them around.

When they got back to the house they couldn't stop talking about their experience and how nice the man was to them. The men had been shooting pool in the garage and couldn't believe what they had done. "You actually went to a funeral home on New Year's Day?" Someone asked. "I hope none of you are superstitious; the legend says that what you do on this day you'll be doing all year long." Everybody laughed. "If you think about it you can only go once if you're dead and if you're not you'll be goin' because somebody else died. So, what's the big deal?" Another said.

Everybody got hungry again and went back to the table for another round. Gerda went for the peas and I kept bitching because I didn't have any giblet gravy. I made my sister promise she would never do that to me again. She said okay she wouldn't; the next time she just wouldn't invite me. Sisters! They think they're so smart.

Learn more about this author, Sylvester Pierpoint (aka John Jeffries).
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