The holiday season brings with it an array of traditional foods: turkey on Thanksgiving; ham or roast beef for Christmas; and if you’re from Central Pennsylvania, pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Day.
There’s nothing quite like New Year’s Day in a Pennsylvania household as the smell of fermented cabbage emanates through the kitchen as you’re attempting to sneak a cat nap in before more festivities begin. And if you’re not from Pennsylvania Dutch land, you may have missed out — or lucked out, depending on your point of view — on this long-standing tradition of eating pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Day to ensure good luck in the coming year. And you may be surprised to find out that people outside of our region (even as close as Philadelphia) have no idea that eating slow-cooked pork with a side of stinky cabbage is a New Year’s Day tradition.
But why pork and sauerkraut? Well, if you’ve lived in our area long enough to be invited to a New Year’s Day celebration, you know the answer to this question is because it’s good luck. But do you know why eating pork and sauerkraut on the first day of the year is considered good luck? We didn’t.
Listen to Pennsylvania Life, Legends, and Lore Episode 3: Pork and Kraut here to find out more about this treasured tradition: https://open.spotify.com/show/3fA18ozL4BkdO9czikoN0B
The dish is a German custom that was brought to Pennsylvania by German immigrants (erroneously called the Pennsylvania Dutch), who settled largely in the central and southcentral portions of the state. Germans and other pig-raising cultures have been eating these dishes for centuries, and today pork and sauerkraut is considered a classic food pairing.
There’s no grand deeper meaning for eating these specific foods together, other than the fact that “rich, fatty, and salty pork is the soulmate of tart and lean kraut,” as Serious Eats puts it. William Woys Weaver, a food historian and author based in Chester County, said winter butchering often took place in the months just before Christmas or New Year’s, so celebratory meals that happened around those times often provided a feast of roasted fresh pork.
Sauerkraut was often added to the meal as a side dish because fall is the height of cabbage harvesting. To make sauerkraut, at-home cooks would pickle the cabbage to turn it into a soft side dish and, largely, to preserve it before refrigeration had become a commonality.
Unless you’ve brined your own cabbage before (kudos if you have!) you probably aren’t aware that it takes between six and eight weeks of soaking the stuff before the cabbage turns to full-on kraut. From the peak fall harvesting of cabbage time in October, the sauerkraut was done right around the holidays. The slightly-sour, tart dish was found to be a perfect pairing with the fatty pork.
But as for the specific foods and their connection to New Year’s, there’s a lot more to it!
The custom of having a pig in the backyard started to disappear by the latter part of the 1900’s, so people continued the holiday custom through the butcher shop. That’s when the pork and sauerkraut combo shifted to a Christmas or New Year’s Day dinner. It persisted on Jan. 1 in tradition not because of convenience, but because superstition kicked in.
Pork isn’t eaten on New Year’s Day only because it’s delicious—it is also thought to be good luck (viel glück in German). The first reason for this goes back to the pig itself: To find food, a pig roots going forward. It’s good to always go forward into the next year—you don’t want to go backward. For instance, one would not eat lobster for luck in the new year because lobsters walk backward. Similarly, one would skip the chicken because they scratch the ground going backward.
The idea that pork brings good luck along with it is actually pre-Christian and is deeply embedded in Old World beliefs about pigs and their animal form as a symbol of Lugh, an Irish deity who was believed to have controlled good luck, money, and wealth. This highlights how the customs of another prevalent group of settlers in Pennsylvania- the Scotch-Irish- mixed with traditions of German settlers to create a unique culture, singular to our region (but that’s another story).
In addition, pork is considered good luck because it is so rich in fat, and the fat signifies prosperity. Pork is eaten on the first day of the year in the hopes it will bring a prosperous year.
Lastly, round foods are also thought to be good luck, because the shape signifies coins and good fortune. Many traditional ways of preparing pork are cut into round pieces when served.
But why sauerkraut? Even though sauerkraut is served in strands, the cabbage it originated from was round, which, as we mentioned, is a shape thought to bring good luck. It’s also green—a color associated with financial prosperity. Symbolically, as many shreds of cabbage from the kraut that are consumend is the amount of wealth you’ll have in the new year. The more kraut, the more cash.
The underlying health benefits of eating kraut also contributes to this tradition, as historically, fermented foods were a big source of vitamin C and nutrients when fresh produce wasn’t available. People wanted to start the year out with a healthy meal and sauerkraut fit the bill.
Somewhere along the line, sauerkraut picked up its own superstitions. The Pennsylvanians who practice this tradition often tell children that if they eat sauerkraut on New Year’s Day, they’re in for “a sweet year.” German folklore states that long strands of sauerkraut represent a long life to be lived.
The tradition grew and was picked up by many non-Pennsylvania Dutch. In Pennsylvania, the custom of pork and sauerkraut dinners is continued by local church groups and civic organizations like fire halls. Nostalgia for the good old days on the farm was turned into fundraisers. Today, grocery stores around the region carry pork and sauerkraut this time of year as it’s in high demand.
So however you do, or don’t enjoy sauerkraut this year, remember that the fermented, home-made krauts that you can pick up at any farm stand or store (not the canned supermarket kinds) has a wide array of health benefits for you… and on January 1st, maybe just a bit of luck too.
