Bread and salt for a new home
Bread and salt for a new home is a housewarming gift in several traditions: bread so the household never goes hungry, salt so its food always has flavor. Estonian and Jewish families described it to folklore students.
What it may mean
Bread and salt are about the plainest gift you could carry into a new home, and that is the point. An Estonian woman in Los Angeles explained that they are given only on a first visit, so that hunger never enters the house and the food will always have flavor. Her grandmother lived through the siege of Leningrad, she added, so wasting food was out of the question; bread was a treasure. In one Jewish family, a mother brought a loaf and salt to her son's first apartment and sprinkled some of the salt on the floor against evil, with orders not to vacuum for a day. The gift says your basics are covered, and someone thought of them. Before your next visit to someone's new place, consider which plain thing would truly help them start over.
Depending on how you saw it
A loaf with a hollow for salt
In old times, the Estonian informant said, people baked a special bread with a little hole in the middle to hold the salt. What could you make by hand for someone's first night somewhere unfamiliar?
Flour instead of bread
One Jewish mother sometimes brought a sack of flour instead of a loaf, so the gift would actually be used. Which tradition have you adapted to make it work in your own life?
Salt for every Manx move
In his description of the Isle of Man, cited by Brand, Waldron wrote that nobody would move from one house to another, marry or put a child out to nurse without salt being exchanged. What do you carry from home to home without fail?
Why it happens in nature
Bread and salt are among the oldest staples of the household: bread as everyday food and salt as seasoning and, for most of history, the main way to preserve meat and fish. Both were cheap and always needed, which made them a gift anyone could afford and no household could do without.
What folk beliefs say
Estonia
An Estonian woman living in Los Angeles said you always bring salt and bread when visiting someone's new home for the first time, at a housewarming called soolaleiva pidu; the bread stands for plentiful food and the salt for flavor, so hunger never comes to the house.
Source: Thomas Seli (collector), Estonian Housewarming Gift (USC Digital Folklore Archive) (2021), folklore.usc.edu. View the page
Jewish family (United States)
When a student moved into his first apartment, his mother, from a Jewish family, brought a loaf of bread and salt so he would never go hungry, and sprinkled salt on the floor to protect against evil, saying it must stay for at least a day.
Source: Carly Anderson (collector), Jewish Bread and Salt for New Homes (USC Digital Folklore Archive) (2019), folklore.usc.edu. View the page
United States
A mother raised Conservative Jewish said she had brought bread and salt to new homeowners a handful of times, bread so you never go hungry and salt so you always have flavor, and thought the custom had spread among many groups in the United States.
Source: af (collector), Bread and Salt for new homeowners (USC Digital Folklore Archive) (2021), folklore.usc.edu. View the page
Isle of Man
Waldron's account of the Manx, cited by Brand, says no one would go out on any important business without salt in their pockets, much less move from one house to another, marry or put a child out to nurse, without salt being exchanged.
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (1849), vol. 3, p. 164. View the page
To reflect on
What plain, practical thing would help someone you know who is starting over?