Happy (Old) New Year!

How did (or will) you celebrate the New Year?

In the Netherlands, people eat oliebollen (sort of round donuts) and, at midnight, they watch the neighbors shoot off fireworks. And then they watch the neighbors do this some more, sometimes until 1:30, depending on the neighborhood. 

When we first moved to Missouri, I was puzzled by the supermarket special of a single rose (for the loved one of your choice) and a can of black-eyed peas (?!). My Southern-born husband explained the black-eyed peas were to bring good fortune through the coming year. We now eat them regularly on January 1. (When we first moved to the Netherlands we had to go to a foreign food store to find them and to buy corn meal). 

In Moldova, many are still waiting to celebrate. Our partner Olesea Ciochina explained, "We still have the old-style (Gregorian Calendar) New Year, on January 13. In the evening, the children will go to the houses with wishes and carols.  The next day children go from house to house with a poem for New Year's greeting. They sow seeds (rice, corn, grain, sometimes even dried beans) to wish you a bountiful year, and you give them something in return. I have to cook some cookies & I will buy some sweets for them." 

She never knows ahead of time how many will come by. 

"It can be 10 or it can be 100. They go 2 by 2 or in groups of 3 or 5 or just 1." 

She leaves the seeds in the yard until late in the evening, when she gathers it all up and feeds it to her chickens. She added with a laugh, "When I open to see how many children there are and to listen to them, they can sow seeds inside the house, too." 

It gives new meaning to the story Jesus told: 

A sower went out to sow his seed, and while he was sowing, some of the seed fell by the roadside and was trodden down and birds gobbled it up. Some fell on the rock, and when it sprouted it withered for lack of moisture. Some fell among thorn-bushes which grew up with the seeds and choked the life out of them. But some seed fell on good soil and grew and produced a crop—a hundred times what had been sown. Luke 8:5-8

We wish you a bountiful harvest in 2024, however you started this New Year!

Mary VanRheenen & Keith Holmes 

P.S. Let us know if you want the recipe for oliebollen, corn bread, or vegan black-eyed peas.