Stuffing Ourselves at Thanksgiving...A Kind of Narcotic
Our lives are ruled by the economy of profit and loss: we weigh an action's possible benefit against its potential harm. But there is another economy, too: one of pure expenditure, for which we expect no return.That other economy urges us to consume more than we can afford, to surpass our self-interest, to let go, give in, take in more than we can chew.
YOU ARE WHAT YOU OVEREAT
WHEN Thanksgiving rolls around, my thoughts turn to stuffing. I don't ordinarily stuff the birds I roast. But planning a turkey dinner for 20, I reflect on my options. I could make the stuffing with chestnuts, but I'd have to roast and peel them - a tedious business.
I could make it with dried fruit and bread crusts, but meat with fruit is a bore. I like cornbread in my stuffing, but it's a bother to bake and a risk to buy. I love the chicken liver and ricotta recipe, but Aunt Helen doesn't. What to do?
My choice of stuffing at Thanksgiving influences my feelings about the holiday as a whole. Like other holidays, Thanksgiving is devoted to exceeding limits.
We are supposed to get drunk on New Year's Eve and Purim; Christmas is required to be an orgy of generosity. But never do I receive such blanket permission for excess as I do from the spectacle of a plump turkey.
The bird reminds me of everything attractive about plumpness, a quality too rarely considered appealing these days. But who doesn't love the swelling thigh - shiny and bronzed? And then there is the stuffing, which is the true index of the stuffing this holiday allows.
With the complicity of the family, on Thanksgiving you are invited to eat more than you can eat - to hurl aside moderation, restraint and the bad conscience with which you routinely approach the table.
The imperative is to stuff yourself, and to start with the fat-filled stuffing that leaves you feeling fed up to the gills.
Those who worry us about public health will issue their Thanksgiving warnings about overeating. A study published last month predicted that 9 of 10 men and 7 of 10 women - pretty much all of us - will eventually become overweight.
Taking an extra helping of stuffing contributes to what the health watchdogs like to call America's epidemic of obesity. The expression misleadingly evokes the image of a spreading infectious disease and calls for drastic action.
Stuffing at Thanksgiving won't kill you, but it may shorten your life by increasing your risk of dying young, as the epidemiologists say. By how much is not at all clear.
Recently the Centers for Disease Control revised its estimates of the deaths due to fat from 400,000 - are you ready for this? - down to 25,814. But if you choose to take the risk of wildly overeating, consider its possible benefits as well.
There must be a reason that all societies sanction public excess at certain moments of the year. Perhaps the occasional orgy is supposed to allow us to better gauge our limits the rest of the time - just as one learns to drink moderately by getting drunk at least once.
Perhaps we should see the Thanksgiving table not as a hurdle to clear but as an opportunity to test our limits by surpassing them.
Indeed, one could argue that stuffing at Thanksgiving is a moral or civic obligation. Even the science of obesity has to yield before the human need to splurge - to expend or consume in excess - from time to time. Such binges are not aberrations but losses of self necessary to our sanity.
Ordinarily our lives are ruled by the economy of profit and loss: we weigh an action's possible benefit against its potential harm. But there is another economy, too: one of pure expenditure, for which we expect no return.
That other economy urges us to consume more than we can afford, to surpass our self-interest, to let go, give in, take in more than we can chew.
Overtaking our own limits - exiting the self in order to recover the self - can heighten our awareness of our capacity for pleasure.
Of course, we risk overdosing. Thanksgiving stuffing is a kind of narcotic. That's probably why our minders view the year's best holiday with deep suspicion. But remember that the family is complicit in this orgy.
It has gathered to allow you to do what you would never do on your own: eat an enormous meal, but somehow end up on the couch in front of the TV, and not on the floor.
Yes, it's wonderful, isn't it? Happy Thanksgiving and God bless America!