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Twitter Is Making Lemon Pigs On New Year's Eve For Good Luck In 2018

Lemon pigs Dreamstime
Elizabeth Licata|

It's New Year's Eve, and Twitter has been getting ready for 2018 with resolutions, remembrances, and a volley of "Goodbye, 2017" memes. But the cutest way of welcoming the New Year is with a lemon pig, a retro good luck charm that appears to be having a big comeback in the last hours of 2017.

A photo of a good luck lemon piglet was posted on the morning of December 31 by the popular Twitter account 70s Dinner Party, which is devoted to showcasing bizarre foods from old cookbooks.

"Happy New Year," 70s Dinner Party wrote, and the account's 78,000 followers were instantly charmed by the weird little lemon pig with a penny in its mouth.

The lemon pig was posted last year by Grannie Pantries, a blog dedicated to vintage cookbooks, and the photo originally came from a entertaining cookbook called 401 Party and Holiday Ideas from Alcoa, which was published in 1971.

"For good luck in the New Year, a lemon piglet is a must!" declared Alcoa, which is short for Aluminum Company of America. (The piglet has a curly tail made of aluminum foil.)

It's an easy project. To make the lemon pig, just cut a slit into the pointiest end of the lemon to hold a penny, then add two little cuts for the ears. The legs are four toothpicks, and the eyes are made of cloves, though people have been improvising with pins or whatever else they might have handy.

Now people have been making their own lemon pigs and posting the photos on Twitter to celebrate the New Year.

Not everybody had all the supplies to make a complete lemon pig, so they did the best they could with what was in the house. 

Will the lemon pigs (or banana pigs) really bring good luck? Maybe not. But they can't hurt, and they're sure cute. And as long as you're stacking the good luck deck in your favor for 2018, check out these 10 lucky dishes to eat on New Year's Eve.

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