My family has a traditional New Year's meal, passed down from my Latvian grandmother but having undergone some drift over the past few decades in the U.S. We eat peas and onions - originally this would have been grey peas, pelēkie zirņi, but those are hard to come by here, so we have green peas - and fish with scales. The fish scales, because they look like coins, stand for prosperity in the new year, as do the peas. The onions stand for the tears of the old year. (I also like to think of eating the onions mixed in with the peas as an acknowledgment that there will always be sorrow in the new year, because that's the nature of life - but we hope the sorrow is outweighed by joy!)

When I visited Latvia a few years ago, I did have the traditional dish, pelēkie zirņi ar speķi, grey peas mixed with onions and bacon. It's hearty and delicious! But for me, when I think of the New Year's meal, I will always think first of the green peas and pearl onions that we had when I was a kid. (This year, I made the lazy version: I heated some frozen peas up in the microwave and mixed in raw green onion.)

My grandmother left Latvia as a refugee from the second Soviet invasion. She rarely talked about her homeland or her family, and she didn't speak Latvian at home; she said that she had to shut the door on her life there in order to build a life here. But this was one of the few Latvian traditions she passed on to my mom and me. It must have meant a lot to her.