Although champagne has become de rigueur as midnight strikes, no single food epitomizes the contemporary New Year’s holiday. The menu may be luxurious caviar at a New Year’s Eve bacchanalia or sobering hoppin’ John on New Year’s Day. Celebrations marking the inexorable march of Father Time often involve foods imbued with symbolism, such as in the Pennsylvania Dutch New Year’s tradition of sauerkraut (for wealth) and pork—the pig roots forward into the future, unlike the Christmas turkey, which buries the past by scratching backward in the dirt.
