SOUTHERN CULTURE | By Tabitha Evans Moore | Editor & Publisher

It started from a gentle reminder from the unofficial Queen of Lynchburg, Marsha Manley Hale on New Year’s Eve Eve.

“Get the laundry done today or tomorrow. New Year’s Day is not the day for washing clothes or bedding,” she posted on her social media page. “My grandma always preached this. She said it would wash someone out of our lives.”

I’m all for avoiding laundry, and I knew about southern traditions like eating black-eyed peas, greens, and hog jowl on New Year’s, but this was a new one on me. So, I got curious, decided to research the idea, and fell down a rabbit hole of the peculiarities of celebrating a brand new year here in The South.

In many Southern and Appalachian households, New Year’s Day isn’t for catching up on chores. There’s an old belief that says if you wash clothes, sheets, or linens on January 1, you risk washing someone out of your life before the year even gets started. Whether taken literally or not, the tradition has survived for generations – passed down quietly, like most Southern wisdom, through kitchens and conversations rather than books.

Versions of the belief vary across the region. Some say doing laundry on New Year’s Day washes away good luck. Others believe it invites loss or death into the household. In its gentlest form, the superstition is less a warning than a caution: the year is new, fragile, and still taking shape, and certain acts are best postponed until its footing feels secure.

The tradition likely grew out of a time when washing clothes was far more than a casual task. Laundry once required hauling water, stoking fires, scrubbing by hand, and hanging garments out to dry regardless of weather. More importantly, washing linens was intimately tied to care – both for the living and, at times, for the dead. In that context, the symbolism of washing on a day meant to mark beginnings takes on a deeper resonance.

New Year’s Day has long been considered a liminal moment – a threshold between what has been and what will be. Many cultures mark such transitions with restrictions or rituals meant to protect what comes next. In Southern households, the prohibition against washing on New Year’s Day fits neatly into that pattern, treating the day not as ordinary time but as something set apart.

There is also a quieter wisdom beneath the superstition. For families who worked hard year-round, New Year’s Day offered sanctioned rest. Letting the laundry wait was a small way of insisting that not everything needed tending immediately, that the year could begin with stillness rather than labor.

Whether believed literally or observed out of habit, the tradition has endured because it carries something people still recognize: a respect for beginnings. In a world that urges constant motion, choosing to pause – even for a day – can feel like an act of intention. And if the laundry stays undone until January 2, perhaps that’s not superstition at all, but a reminder that some things can wait. •

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