Here's How Black Families Celebrated New Year's Across the Diaspora

From black-eyed peas and collard greens to cleaning out old energy, here's how Black communities will be ringing in 2024.

For many in Black communities, New Year’s has long been a way to honor cultural traditions and celebrate our family and our ancestors. On New Year's Eve and New Year’s Day, it’s not just about parties and socializing—or eating good food! For many from across the African Diaspora, New Year’s is a time to focus on renewal and new beginnings, to continue on the path to prosperity, while also focusing on health and wellness.

Tiffanie Drayton, a Caribbean-American journalist originally from Trinidad & Tobago, and author of Black American Refugee: Escaping the Narcissism of the American Dream, says there is no question where she prefers to spend Old Year’s Night (as New Year’s Eve is known)—its Trinidad hands down.

Drayton spent her fair share of New Year's holidays experiencing frigid Northeast winters in the United States. While she never formally did the New Year’s tradition of walking around the neighborhood with a suitcase to guarantee more travel, she remembers her first adult New Year’s Eve in Trinidad vividly.

Back in 2013, Drayton jumped on an inexpensive flight on December 31st to Trinidad that was scheduled to arrive with only a few hours to spare before the clock struck midnight. Once she landed, where the December evening weather is typically in the 70s, Drayton remembers how she started asking around to solidify her Old Year’s Night plans. By happenstance, Drayton heard her neighbor blasting some great Trinidadian calypso music.

‘You don’t have to look for a party,’ the neighbor called over to her genially, ‘Come over to our party.’ While Drayton did a double-take on the makeshift tire grill/oven that was preparing food outside in the street, the resulting pulao (a Caribbean holiday dish that typically contains pigeon peas, meat or chicken, and rice along with fresh herbs and coconut milk) was delicious. It made a perfect memory for Drayton’s first New Year’s Eve in Trinidad as an adult returnee.

Drayton tells Kindred by Parents it’s now an annual tradition for her entire family to be in Trinidad, including her mother, sister, aunt, grandmother, and scores of other relatives and friends. Drayton considers Old Year’s Night to be a great opportunity to start preparing for the months-long Carnival season.

Drayton says she does not follow any specific traditions about wearing New Year’s colorful undergarments or specific clothing colors, but what is essential is dressing to impress and fashion-clothing ‘bling’ she says for the New Year festivities.

Dressing Up for Church

Many of Caribbean and African descent take dressing up for a New Year’s Eve church service very seriously. Children may be more likely to wear their Sunday finest for the a.m. religious services, but adults want to look their finest for both a.m. and p.m. church services—and the late-night festivities, as well. Depending on one’s church or denomination, midnight mass or other late-night church services are often an essential part of celebrating the New Year. When it comes to specific colors for outfits, there’s a range from green, black, red, gold, white, and silver. All are popular choices when it comes to New Year’s Eve outfits.

When she was a child, Professor Lindamichelle Baron, associate professor at York College in Jamaica, New York, and Poet Laureate of Hempstead, New York, has vivid memories of eating hearty New Year’s Eve meals with her family every December 31st. Baron’s father was a church minister who instilled the importance of church attendance in his children. Baron remembers New Year's as an opportunity to dress up in vibrant colors, both at church and at home. Baron’s fashion-oriented mother always prioritized making sure the entire family greeted the New Year in style, Baron recalled.

Making Noise!

Another common New Year’s African Diaspora tradition connects celebrating the New Year’s with noise, fireworks, music, yelling, and vocalizing—sometimes all at the same time. Many kids enjoy getting in on the New Year’s Eve action with toy noise-makers, toy horns, and other ways of vocally ushering in the New Year. According to old-school lore, making noise during New Year’s Eve wards off evil spirits, juju, or bad energy and guarantees positive luck going forward into the New Year.

"We would clang the pots and pans and that would be our New Year’s Eve celebration,” Baron says remembering how her brother, cousin, and others would enjoy the New Year’s festivities at home during their childhood years.

In the Caribbean and Latin America, and many places throughout Africa, ear-splitting New Year’s Eve fireworks and pyrotechnics are the best way of celebrating. In the United States, many love welcoming the New Year with the Times Square ball drop or more local fireworks.

Cleaning Out the Old Energy

The origin of this New Year’s Eve tradition (or superstition) depending on who you ask is about keeping a good precedent and starting New Year’s with a clean slate. Having a clean house all of the time would be an expectation for the majority of old-school homes across the African Diaspora.

But when it comes to New Year’s for many families, for many, it is a group ritual to clean together and sweep all the bad energy out. Families would also take certain steps to make sure the home pantry was full and that everyone’s wallets and pocketbooks were placed just-so within the home. Per tradition, everything had a place and a purpose once the sweeping and cleaning were complete.

“You would never put your pocketbook on the ground,” says Baron. “You don’t want your money low.”

The superstition was that putting a wallet or purse on the ground would be inauspicious or bad luck for the New Year. Being careless with one’s money and finances on New Year’s was verboten since the hope for New Year’s was financial prosperity for both the individual and the entire family in the New Year, Baron explains.

Eating for Good Luck

There’s a wide range of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day food that graces family tables across the African Diaspora, but Hoppin’ John or black-eyed peas and rice are high up on the list, especially among Southern African-American families. Black-eyed peas are thought to represent coins or good luck. For New Year’s, many families across the African Diaspora eat some form of peas or beans along with rice; the protein-rich legume sometimes has chicken or pork mixed in.

Black-eyed peas can be found throughout the African Diaspora, including in West Africa, the Caribbean, Brazil, and the United States, and were known to be a hardy crop that could grow and thrive in difficult conditions. Today, Nigeria is considered to be the largest producer, importer, and consumer of black-eyed peas in the world,  commonly known there as ‘cowpeas’ or ‘beans.’

Green vegetables are often on the New Year’s menu, whether it’s collard greens, spinach, cabbage, or another green veggie. The reason why many families eat green-colored dishes is because these dishes also correspond with prosperity and good luck in the New Year. Some families eat grapes (either green or purple grapes are fine) but one specific New Year’s Eve tradition says you have to eat 12 grapes to represent the 12 months of the year as the clock strikes midnight. If you eat a sour grape during that ritual, lore states you will have a sour corresponding month.

Golden and brown-colored foods also are important New Year staples, including cornbread or yellow plantains. Among Haitians and Haitian-Americans, a traditional New Year’s soup is Jomou, a golden-colored soup that typically includes butternut squash and root vegetables like parsnips and carrots. Some versions of this New Year’s Haitian soup may include meat. This traditional Haitian dish commemorates Haiti’s liberation from absolute French rule as a result of a Haitian slave revolt back on January 1, 1804.

In Puerto Rican culture, New Year’s Eve and holiday cuisine include pernil, slow-roasted pork, arroz con gandules (rice with pigeon peas), and tembleque, coconut-flavored rice pudding. A popular New Year’s Eve beverage among Puerto Ricans is coquito roughly translated to “little coconut.” The beverage is a coconut-based alcoholic drink that is the equivalent of New Year’s eggnog.

Freedom's Eve and Watch Night Celebrations

January 1st was the day that President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 amid the Civil War. So, for many Black Americans, “Freedom’s Eve” or “Watch Night” meant families would stay up together past midnight on December 31 to commemorate the proclaimed end of slavery (although historically slavery didn’t end until a few years later following the end of The Civil War.)

Professor Don Harrell, a native of South Carolina who currently lives in Winter Gardens, Florida, recalls his childhood experiences celebrating “Watch Night” at church.

“When the clock strikes 12 midnight, you would ‘plead the blood’ or really pray hard asking God for blessing and asking Jesus to cover you,” said Harrell, an adjunct professor of Africana studies at the University of Central Florida, and an ethnomusicologist who co-founded Orisirisi, a performing arts company with his wife Adetutu Harrell.

Today, some churches and other gatherings continue to celebrate Watch Night with a focus on reflecting on the history of slavery and the subsequent freedom of Black Americans. Harrell notes that spending time with family and eating dishes like Hopping Johns were an integral part of any New Year’s Eve meal in his childhood years.

Baron adds she was never a fan of chitlins, an essential dish in her childhood home during the holidays, but she relished all of the other savory New Year’s traditional dishes at the family table.

Water and Renewal

Water plays a part in many New Year’s Eve traditions. Pouring libations is a tradition practiced throughout Africa year-round, but during any kind of ceremonial function on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, elders might perform a libation ceremony. Pouring libations is dropping symbolic drops of water or alcohol on the ground to honor deities, spirits, and ancestors.

According to Harrell, who spent time as a student in Ghana and whose wife is originally from Nigeria, pouring libations water is an important part of all ritualized events throughout the African Diaspora. He remembers attending a funeral years ago the week of New Year’s where libations were poured before the solemn event started. For New Year’s Eve, pouring libations is a typical event–anything from a housewarming to a graduation, a regular ritual to honor loved ones who have passed on, and common at a range of social gatherings.

Among some communities in Brazil, water is also important in the New Year. For many, it is traditional to wear all-white outfits to ward off bad spirits, particularly during water-focused ceremonies that can take place during the New Year and on other occasions. In coastal towns in Brazil, it is common to give individuals leave offerings like flowers to Iemanjá, Goddess of the Sea. To conclude the ritualized ceremony, individuals are expected to jump seven waves for good fortune.

On the flip side, for some families in Puerto Rico, one New Year’s tradition is when the clock strikes midnight, some families fill up pots and pans and buckets with water and then throw the water out the window. Legend has it that throwing the water out the window means the family was washing away past problems and ensuring good fortune in the New Year.

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