Every New Year’s Day (including just after midnight on New Year’s Eve), I have made a point of eating sauerkraut and pork as part of my family’s (on my father’s side) tradition of doing so to ensure good luck for the coming year. While she lived, my Grandmother Koch hosted us for New Year’s Day dinner, and it featured, among other things, these two essential foodstuffs.

Even now, as part of how I see in each year, I get out the crockpot on New Year’s Eve, put a couple cans or jars of sauerkraut in, take pre-cooked kielbasa or Polish sausage and cut it into pieces, stir them into the sauerkraut, set the crockpot on low and let them cook. Then, when the ball drops at One Times Square, and after some kissing and champagne imbibing, I dig in!

Others I know consume Hoppin’ John (a base of black-eyed peas, onions, and spices, served with rice and cornbread, often accompanied with greens–collar or turnip) to usher in the New Year with good fortune. Perhaps you who are reading this have your own traditions around the New Year (or other specific holidays).

Well, if so, know this much: Saint Aunaire had a special passion for stamping out these behaviors! Butler relates:

Zealous to restore discipline in his diocess, [Aunaire] assembled a synod, where forty-five statutes were framed, the first of which condemned superstitious observances on New Year’s day. He was indefatigable (i.e., just wouldn’t quit!) in his vigilance and care over the purity of manners, and constantly instructed his people in all the duties that regard the Christian dispensation.

Christianity, historically, has vacillated between renouncing and co-opting pagan practices. See, for example, a recent blog post in which I mentioned how Christianity “took over” the Wiccan celebration of Imbolc (at the beginning of February) and turned it into Candelmas. Aunaire was of the renouncing variety.

Now if Aunaire condemned my annual sauerkraut-and-pork tradition for good luck as a “superstitious observance” I would first laugh and tell him to relax and have a plateful. But if he then turned red in the face and began berating me for trying to tempt him into doing evil things that God hates or for acting in a non-Christian (e.g., pagan) way, then I would lose some of my holiday bonhomie. And if he kept at it long enough, threatening to throw me out of the Church or worse, I would challenge him to explain to me just how it is that the yearly consumption of specific food for good luck was “superstitious,” but that putting some water on a baby’s head lest its eternal soul be separated from a God who ostensibly “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” isn’t.

I should imagine that he would say that baptism is holy and sacramental and a means of God’s grace. And he might point out that Jesus himself was baptized! And certainly, Aunaire could also score some points (if it ever even occurred to him) in pointing out that Jesus would not have eaten pork because of his religious beliefs. But then I’d ask Aunaire if he as a representative of Christianity avoided pork. And most likely he would have to admit that he did not find the avoidance of pork products something that Christians must do–that Christians needn’t follow those practices of Jews. So I’d push ahead with asking again–is Christianity devoid of superstitions, or has it merely decided that its superstitions and magical thinking are actually God-ordained and articles of faith.

Etymologically and historically, “superstition” has an original meaning of “religious belief based on fear or ignorance and considered incompatible with truth or reason”–a judgment that almost screams out for references to glass houses and stone-throwing. How many religious beliefs and practices are fear-based? How many do not stand up to the test of rationality? Not surprisingly, I’ve never discovered a  rational connection between consuming pork and sauerkraut on a specific day and good luck in the succeeding 365. Nor would I ever assert that there is some kind of transcendent truth to the annual practice. And I don’t do it out of fear of displeasing God. I do it because it connects me to tradition, to others who’ve come before me–even if some of those people were indeed other-than-Christian.

Aunaire? I can only feel that limiting our connection to those from history to other Christians that had severed their connections to non-Christians is a sad and unnecessary diminution of our lives and histories–and positions us poorly for our lives in this world now. In a strange way, my own awareness of pork-eating on a special occasion raises rather than lowers my own appreciation for those who make a point of being aware of not eating pork.