New Year's Day traditions have Southern flavor

Southerners have some long-standing traditions tried to New Year's Day, many of them tied to food and symbols of luck.
There are turnip greens, which represent “folding” money (bills); black-eyed peas, which represent “change” (coins); fatback (pork) which represents prosperity; and cornbread, which represents a complete menu.
In some homes, Hoppin' John, a beans-and-rice dish, is a New Year's Day must.
And for some folks, it isn't New Year's Day without a Polar Bear Dip.
No, it's not something you serve with chips or crackers. For a quarter of a century, a group of people have gathered at the Flora-Bama, a local watering hole, for a bracing, early morning dip into the Gulf of Mexico on New Year's Day.
Of course, on Flora-Bama time, early morning is noon.
Other places around the world have similar celebrations in much more forbidding climes. But it's a sure bet that the backdrop for those events is not nearly as colorful or as fun as the Gulf of Mexico. And to make the day truly Southern, everyone who takes part gets a heapin' helping of black-eyed peas.