Good people eat. So do bad people, skinny people, fat people, tall and short ones. Heaven help us we will never master photosynthesis. Planning complex, beautiful meals and investing one’s heart in their preparation is the opposite of self-indulgence. Kitchen-based family gatherings are process-oriented, cooperative, and in the best of worlds, nourishing and soulful.

Barbara Kingsolver

I started writing about Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life in April of this year. It chronicles – in a month-by-month, garden-centric way – Kingsolver’s family experience of living a year as locavores, eating food they produced or found locally. Reading about their journey this year somehow made the speed of 2020 make more sense. It reminded me that food connects us to the rhythm of the natural world; when we let it. It asked me to think about what I learned in my grandparent’s garden, my love/hate relationship with the kitchen, the generosity and abundance of the natural world, and the absolute artistry of a well prepared meal. This particular chapter, “Celebration Days,” looks at the holidays that fall at the end of the year and the central role food plays in those celebrations. I want to follow Kingsolver’s lead and consider food as nourishing and soulful, and perhaps the heart of holiday connection.

I love to eat. I love to get together with others and eat. I love to cook for others (and get better at it the more I do it.) I think back to times when I have hosted events. I think back to meals with friends and family. I think about the journey my husband and I have been on to find great recipes and make them for each other. Though I am not sure this speaks to Kingsolver’s point about process and collaboration, I think about the restaurants I have grown to love over the years and the connections I have made there.

I the spirit of the Holidays, I would like to offer a definition of “celebration days.” My definition includes soulful, as Kingsolver suggests, planning and preparation. My definition includes gathering with loved ones of all descriptions. My definition includes room the table for strangers, too. My definition includes stories and music. My definition also, of course, includes lots of delicious food.