It’s that time of year again! The season we feast! We’ve chosen certain days to spend interminable hours thawing turkeys, swearing at pie crusts and refining our bread making skills … all in order to allow our friends and extended family to gather and stuff themselves silly.
Sure, there’s plenty of research on the established benefits of sharing meals within a community – from physical (eating together can improve cardiovascular health, lower obesity rates and prompt more vegetable consumption) to psychological (community meals lead to lower rates of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and substance abuse).
But in the postcard perfect narration that often surrounds these meals, we don’t often address the dark side … these events, for many, can be riddled with pitfalls. Scheduling the right day at the right venue, wearing the right sweater, bringing the right dish, saying appropriate things to the appropriate people. Spending hours with people you don’t know well, and frankly, a few you don’t like that much. One false step and your holiday-card moment may turn all National Lampoon.
It’s happened to me. And frankly, I’ve had to ask myself hard questions about whether this risk is worth the reward. Archeologist Brian Hayden believes that the reward of feasting is essential … because without these events, he says, we would be stuck as hunters and gatherers.
From an ethnographic perspective, feasts are far different from the food and social bonding events we tend to generalize them into today. Traditional feasts developed as entertainment – with ulterior motives and binding debts. Feasting, historically, was the way people created and maintained reliable social support networks—and it worked precisely because these were high-stakes political affairs.
As anyone who has ever purchased a honey-baked ham knows, big meals can be expensive. But it’s nothing compared to the cost of a traditional feasts in some cultures. Feasts sometimes require up to 10 years of work and savings. And understandably, those who pay for them expect to obtain benefit from their efforts and expenditures. This is the important part about feasting: those who are invited are obligated to reciprocate. By accepting an invitation to a feast, a person is in tacit agreement to hammer out a relationship of alliance with the host. Failing to reciprocate food and gifts often leads to warfare.
We talk about the benefits of sharing a meal … and they are real. You put yourself in a position to strengthen relationship bonds, gain political and social support, and develop a deeper understanding of your social networks. Historically … and perhaps today too … this support was critical because social and political conflicts are rife in tribal communities, with accusations of infidelity, theft, sorcery, questions of inheritance, unpaid bills, and boundary disputes. In order to defend oneself from such accusations and threats of punishment, individuals needed strong allies within the community. Feasts were a great way to get them.
So if you are about to be accused of sorcery, pull out the good china and start Googling recipes for candied yams, because a well-executed feast may be your saving grace. Gather your tribe, negotiate your alliances, frost the sugar cookies … and for the love of all that is holy, don’t bring up Trump.
