Every New Year's Eve, Jim Leyland's family gathers in his childhood home and participates in a tradition. The males in the family, from grandparents down to grandkids, take a piece of bread and a piece of coal, go out the back door - "which signifies letting out the old year," he explains - and come back in through the front. They say a prayer and then present the coal and bread to the oldest woman in the family to symbolize a year of food and warmth.

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