Gathering to feast isn't the problem
Blaming the Honey Baked™ Ham Company, food media, and the patriarchy
It was Wednesday morning, I was sitting holding my baby and drinking coffee, staring out the window, feeling momentarily calm and content. I was able to stop and notice – wow this is beautiful – and try to experience it as fully as possible as it was happening.
Then I heard the Honey Baked™ Ham Company’s commercial play on the radio. Yes, it’s trademarked because nothing says ‘holiday meals’ like legally claiming two common words. They were advertising full meals starring pre-cooked ham or turkey (just warm to eat) that could be picked up in store without calling ahead.
Thoughts I had while listening: Good Lord, the pressure to nail this specific meal (turkey, potatoes, stuffing, gravy, sweet potatoes, and pie) is so unnecessary. The food waste, the excess that must be there to have meals ready for pick up without notice. What happens to the extra food? And yes, there it is again: Media is constantly reminding people we have no time to cook.
I acknowledge and am working in the reality that the history of Thanksgiving as it is generally told upholds and covers over the horrors of settler-colonialism. I don’t gloss over this and I believe that Indigenous Lands must get back into Indigenous hands. I also believe that people need to feast together in ways that build relationships and keep the work of healing and liberation going. I don’t care when people feast (a certain Thursday in November is not the only day available.) But something (many things) is amiss if the act of preparing a feast is such a burden that it’s outsourced, not done at all ever, or dreaded.
After the calendar ticked over into Thanksgiving Week I could feel the anxiety in the air ratchet up another level (or five), even as I am actively resisting it. I was talking with my mom and we agreed that it’s harder to be okay this time of year. Even when, personally, things are good enough, it feels like it takes more effort to resist the pull of anxiety, dread, and holiday imposter syndrome.
I might feel better if I lay some blame. My first two targets are food businesses and food media. The ham company (and their ilk) can get out of here with their convenience offerings that actually serve to stoke the anxiety of needing to serve a ‘perfect’ meal. Food media can pound sand with their guides and how-tos, their dos and don’ts that turn what I believe should be a fun experience (cooking a special meal) into a maze of rules. And lastly, for now, I want to blame the patriarchy for heaping pressure to produce a certain holiday meal so high onto womens’ shoulders while 365 days of the year we are paid less, generally take on more work inside the home, and are told we need to do it all with a smile on our face in the name of ‘tradition’ and ‘family.’
I’m still reading Mythologies by Roland Barthes, and in the essay, Wine and Milk, he writes: “Actually, like all resilient totems, wine supports a varied mythology which does not trouble about contradictions.” The Thanksgiving meal is another symbol that has no problem with contradictions. It is meant to be spent cooking with loved ones, and it is also impossible to cook so spend $134 and you’ll have the meal made for you. It is meant to be a time of connecting with family, and it is also dreaded because relationships are often fraught. It is a time to be generous, and yet so often the bulk of the labor falls on few shoulders. The symbol of a country united in giving thanks can become yet another time that US citizens are hungry and neglected.
The meal seems to be a symbol for the family. And this is a time of year when any oddity or loss or lack in a family feels more obvious. If I can't have a perfect family, then at least I can have a perfect meal. But what if the generous meal, whatever it is, is only a true feast if it was prepared and procured in a way that meets everyone’s needs, not an external subjective standard?
Continuing to quote Barthes – I promise I’ll finish reading the book and move on to new material soon – he writes in the essay about children’s toys, “However, faced with this world of faithful and complicated objects, the child can only identify himself as owner, as user, never as creator; he does not invent the world, he uses it: there are, prepared for him, actions without adventure, without wonder, without joy.”
Like the miniature doctor’s set or toy gun, the fully prepared meal (offered for a low price) only allows us to identify as owner or user (eater), not creator. We don’t create the meal, we consume it, the same dishes year in and year out. Another problem I have with the commercial is that I like to cook and believe the cooking is part (not all) of what makes a feast a feast. I grow angry when I hear “You can’t cook, you don’t have enough time to cook, you can’t make this meal as good as us, the Honey Baked Ham Company, so don’t even try – just buy ours!”
At a feast in my family, there’s a job for everyone and everyone is working until we sit down to eat. I’m elbow to elbow with one brother as he makes green beans (with fresh dill, lemon, salt, lots of pepper – no fried onion) and I tuck warm rolls into a basket. We check the paper timeline of the tasks leaving fingerprints, onto the next step. The youngest set the table, the oldest answer a million questions as the middles are learning how to carry the feast on in the future, when they will be the oldest. The organized chaos of the kitchen at this moment is one of my happiest places. Sitting down to eat is the whipped cream on the pie.
A feast is a worthy effort. A feast is a privilege and as such shouldn’t be an obligation. Although the media, grocery stores, and family can make it feel like one. Just because it is a privilege doesn’t mean it should fall on one person to make it, or that it must be made a certain way. There is so much room for creation. A feast can be a time of inviting others in and nourishing more people than who are usually at your table. An opportunity to grow the privilege bigger, not smaller.
As I keep referencing, the USDA reported that 12.8% of households (17 million households) struggled to get enough food in 2022, up from 10.2%, (13.5 million households), in 2021. These horrifying numbers are likely rising. I can’t help feeling that the obsession around holiday meal planning and/or purchasing, stirred up by those who profit from it, is a huge distraction from the brutal truth that our neighbors don’t have enough food to eat. How can we feast while limiting waste? How can we use a feast to share food with others? What is ours, what is being put upon us by companies who want to sell us something?
Returning to what's most important: The people. Building a world based on mutuality and justice. Living by the principle that if it's not good for everyone, it’s not good for anyone. This applies to the food itself (not excluding people who eat differently than the “standard” Thanksgiving meal allows) and relationships too (i.e. not forcing people to be together if it’s not safe, not ignoring conflict all year and expecting holidays to be good.) Not ignoring the violent history of the US in favor of avoiding hard conversations or personal reckonings.
I’ve written before about seeking relief in consumable form, and there is even more reason and pressure to do this “for” the holidays. As if anything I can purchase will guarantee fulfilling relationships and continued luck. But there are moments as I scroll through the NYT cookie feature or look at what’s on the holiday shelves at the grocery store when I think, maybe this is the answer. Maybe everything I want is in this bag of white chocolate-covered, crushed-candy-cane-encrusted popcorn. But I know that’s not possible, it’s merely capitalism messing with my human brain.
What I want is at the same time so much bigger than holiday food, and also so much more attainable than the mass-market media buzz would make me think. I want peace, justice, and love. I want everyone to have enough food, a place to live, and to treat the planet well while doing so. I know those to be worthy causes to work toward. I also want everyone to be able to sit down at a table with their people and eat, drink, and connect over a longer than usual meal, something that’s not only possible but necessary.
Reading – Will climate cookbooks change how we eat? by Caroline Saunders (who also writes the excellent Pale Blue Tart) in Grist. Pouring Passion: How Circo Vino’s Sariya Jarasviroj Elevates Arizona’s Wine Scene by Daniel Mills in Tucson Foodie. And in WIRED, The QAnon Shaman Isn’t Even the Most Extreme Candidate in His Race for Congress by David Gilbert (featuring some great quotes from Arizona Right Watch.)
Writing – This newsletter and not much else this week. And that is okay!
Cooking – I made fresh cranberry-orange sauce, sweet potato casserole with honeyed pecans, and I have all the ingredients to make Alicia Kennedy’s Cranberry-Orange Nut Bread later today to bring to my mother-in-law’s.