Here are things I have heard in the Asheville area and NC mountains that people do every year to ensure luck.

 

New Years Tradition

Eat Black Eyed Peas Collard Greens and Hog Jowl for New Years Day Dinner to insure good luck all year.

Don't take your Christmas tree down until New Years Day or you will have bad luck all year.

What ever you are doing at midnight New Years Eve you will do all year round.

Old harp singing was traditional in early 1900's.

Home Remedies - mountain medicine, folk remedies for entertainment purposes only

Traditional Mountain Wedding Celebration

When Mountain folk married, they returned to one of their parents homes. As soon as the couple goes to bed, Neighbors, friends, and relatives arrive for the wedding reception or shivaree. Everyone enters the newlyweds bedroom. The newlyweds were then lifted out of bed by the men guests and "rode on a pole." Four men put a rail on their shoulders and then the groom is put astride of the rail and carried throughout the area with much whooping and carrying on. Meanwhile, the women folk would tie cow bells under the wedding bed.

In Western North Carolina around the turn of the 20th century, when a couple got married everyone in the community baked a layer of cake and covered the top with applesauce. Then they would bring the layer of cake to the wedding. The layers would go into a stack of cake hence the layered wedding cake. A couples popularity was measured on how high their wedding cake was.

Unsmiling wedding pictures were tradition in early 1900's.

Superstitions on the Color of the Wedding Dress

• Marry in White....You'll surely fight
• Marry in Green....You'll be ashamed to be seen.
• Marry in brown.... You'll live in a town.
• Marry in blue....You'll always be true.
• Marry in black....You'll wish yourself back.
• Marry in yellow.... You've got the right fellow....

see also Country Cooking Traditional Methods

Applesauce Cake Recipes