New Year’s resolutions, traditions, and maybe a hope

Wishing all our readers a very Happy New Year.
To start off on a positive note, it looks like the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle Campaign was a success. Dodge County Salvation Army Coordinator Tanya Young said that as of this past weekend, the Kettles had collected $34,044.38. That’s not necessarily the final total as they are still waiting for any additional checks to arrive before posting a final amount.
Adding that to the amount that the Care and Share program in November raised and other events during the Christmas season and it shows that local residents are concerned about their neighbors.
With New Year’s Day coming this year on a Wednesday it seems like we are still in the Holiday mode until the end of this week. So, with that in mind, let’s keep it light this week and take a look at New Year’s resolutions. Every year one can surf the internet and find out what the most popular resolutions for the new year are and this year is no exception.
According to one of the national polls on the subject, the top resolution is to save more money. That, apparently, is the goal of 21 percent of the respondents. Coming in second, at 19 percent, is eating healthier, followed by exercising more at 19 percent, losing weight at 15 percent, and spending more time with family and friends at 14 percent.
Those all seem like worthy goals for 2025. But probably the most realistic resolution is the one named by 43 percent of survey respondents — “I am not making a resolution.” That seems to be the most reasonable resolution since surveys have shown that only about nine percent of those who make resolutions actually keep them.
I’m among those who stopped making New Year’s resolutions a long time ago. But I do pay some attention to another fun New Year’s thing — holiday traditions. I don’t know if these traditions are not real common in Minnesota, or if I was just not aware of them. I never gave them much thought until I moved to Texas many years ago.
That was when I learned that eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day is a traditional lucky food in the southern United States. Oh, and they should be accompanied by collard greens and cornbread.
The theory is that the black-eyed peas represent coins, the collard greens represent paper money, and the cornbread represents gold.
Some people even go as far as to say one should eat exactly 365 black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day, one for each day of the year.
I’m still not sure I believe it works but after living in Texas and Virginia for more than a decade I still follow that tradition. I’m actually writing this column on Monday before New Year’s Day, but I did check my pantry over the weekend to make sure I have black eyed peas (though I did not count them) and cornbread ingredients. I don’t know about collard greens, but I think spinach works too.
I really think, however, that this year in Minnesota there is more of a New Year’s hope than a New Year’s tradition. I think it may be something Minnesotans don’t want to say out loud but are secretly thinking. Could this finally be the year that a certain football team goes to the Super Bowl and wins?