Turkey Day

After four months of no-looking-back vegetarianism, I am looking down the barrel of a chicken's carcass. It has been the easiest thing I've ever done not eating meat. After all, who wants to eat something that brings up images of animal torture and bacterial cesspool processing plants? I have literally had nightmares about having to eat meat in the past four months, which is probably a typical over-reaction on the part of my imagination. Still, the fact remains. So the (perfectly reasonable) question is: why eat meat ever again?

Enter my little brother (in-law). He's recently found his passion as a chef and is in his first year of culinary school. This being his first Thanksgiving as a burgeoning expert on The Feast, he has decided to cook us this meal and this meal is to be mostly held down by chicken. Perhaps it is easy enough to see my quandary. Certainly I have gotten enough grief at restaurants when I order an array of sides (and all too often find the pieces of bacon in green beans, corn, okra, spinach...why so much bacon I ask you Southern Cooking?!) and call into question the meat-centered choices of the rest of the table. Even saying nothing (which is an innocence I can't always claim), it is still a judgement being made. And judgement is the last thing I want to offer to my brother in poor thanks of his creative offering today.

It is no mystery that Thanksgiving played a large part in the discussions of the book that led me to all this: Eating Animals (Jonathan Safran Foer). It is the holiday that, almost even more than Christmas, emphasizes the community that is one's family. The coincidence of this and the centerpiecing of large animals to be consumed is unfortunate but ingrained. What is Thanksgiving without the smells of roasting turkey or game? While it is true that I am among a growing percent of our population that would find the celebration a lot more enjoyable without the consumption of flesh, I have no illusions as to where the majority of people still are on the issue. Foer compiled his book from three years intensive research and philosophical exploration and made the case against how we raise and eat flesh in the most compelling of terms, and yet even he still came up with the problem of Thanksgiving. The problem is that there is a vast difference between the casual holocaust of McDonald's McNuggets and the loving offerings of meat that are so central to most family's celebration of this holiday. Surely there must be a consideration for the exercise of community that this meal is in its highest form.

The author came to the conclusion that the conversation of not eating meat even on Thanksgiving could provide a benefit in itself to one's family. And I agree that it has been a good conversation between me and mine. However, the conversation has been had and yet we are still to find a chicken at the center (and almost the sum total) of our little brother's debut meal. While I have plenty of ethical ground to stand on in refusing this meal, I find little in the form of showing my gratitude for his gift. So I have made the personally difficult decision to share every part of this meal with him and this family. And I do look forward to the magic that my brother will work, and the memories we are about to share as we eat together. It may not be an objective conclusion, but it is an expression of the compromise that is central to any love. So I am grateful for this holiday that has the potential for such a real incarnation of love and hope that we can all find the large and small ways to foster each precious bond we have. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.