Celebrating holidays, for me, is different nowadays than it used to be back when I was much younger.
There was a time when during the holiday season that I didn’t even give a moment’s thought to the amount of calories that would find their way onto my plate and into my mouth.
Whether we were celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year’s, it did not matter – it was all the same – lots of family, lots of food and lots of fun.
The cooking would start early in the morning, long before I would wake. It was the smell of turkey on Thanksgiving that would rouse me out of bed.
I’m pretty sure that it was our house – my grandmother’s house really – in North Rome that was the best smelling house in all of Bradford County.
Family would converge on North Rome from all the places that they had spread out to, and we would come together in this one place. My mother and I would drive in from Elmira, N.Y.
All the extra leaves for the table would come out of their storage places and the kitchen table would suddenly become the largest kitchen table I have ever seen. Even so, a few years we still had to have a kids’ table because there just wasn’t enough room at the main table.
At least a couple times we had a neighbor or two at our table. These neighbors were not just neighbors, they were our friends.
It was a full house – a house full of joy, love and laughter – so full of all of these things, that I’m quite sure the walls could barely contain them.
We would feast away. One year I remember the bird in my grandmother’s really large oven (I’m pretty sure the largest residential oven I’ve ever seen) was a 25-pound turkey. It was most definitely big enough for leftovers, even if we did eat a lot of it.
Giant bowls of potatoes, lots of stuffing, and all the other classic holiday foods – we had it all.
And when we were done celebrating Thanksgiving, that same day, we would celebrate Christmas too, because not everyone in the family could make it for our Christmas Eve celebration.
We’d play games and snack. Some would watch football. I admit I didn’t do much of that.
Until the gifts came out, I was more likely to be found playing Scrabble or watching others play Scrabble, popping grapes in my mouth as the words came to mind. These were great times. I think it was during one of these holiday games where I heard the story about my mother being challenged once for playing the word “tharf” during some other random game. As it turns out, bad tiles can make great words. And so the alphabet soup left on my mom’s letter tray turned out to be useful.
Then there were the pies. Sometimes we’d eat pie right after our meal and sometimes we’d wait a while. Usually there were three types of pie to choose from if memory serves. We’d have pumpkin (or sometimes squash), mincemeat and some other random fruit pie – likely apple or grape.
As I think of all the eating that we would do that day, complete with turkey sandwiches or other leftovers later on, I can’t say that I have any idea how any of us could walk after all of that.
I didn’t care about calories then. I ate what I wanted to.
Since then, I don’t always eat nearly as freely as I once did. The consciousness of what one meal can do to my health has crept into my mind. I ate pretty well at Thanksgiving this year, although the celebrations of the past and present are quite different. We no longer converge on North Rome – that house is now a memory – although the best of memories.
Some of our family members are no longer with us. I’d like to think that they are somewhere in heaven celebrating the holidays there, waiting for the day that the rest of us will one day join them. I imagine them enjoying a feast where no one has to worry about whether or not their clothes will fit thereafter.
The truth about holidays is that sure, the food is good, but it’s the people that make it all great.
One year I ate eight (small) crescent rolls during one Thanksgiving meal, but I would have had as much fun if I had only one or two. Yes, there were enough crescent rolls left for the rest of my family too – I didn’t eat them all – even if I acted as if I was trying to.
I was young then, and not as aware of what I was doing to my waistline as I am now.
I hadn’t learned yet how to savor my food. And frankly, I knew that year I was being quite a porker, even as I was stuffing my face.
I still have to remember that food is really best savored even if sometimes it so much fun to shovel it in.
And frankly, it’s so easy to shovel the food in one’s mouth when there is so much of it on the table and so many others that are doing the same.
And also, some years it may be hard to tame the energy that can be at the holiday table, enough so that one is capable of being mindful of savoring one’s food between the stories and the laughter.
I admit I can’t be counted guilty of savoring my Thanksgiving meal this year. I wish I had. I didn’t eat eight crescent rolls by any means this year, but I forgot myself a little bit and had a little extra stuffing and an extra roll or two.
The holidays weren’t over though. I still had Christmas holiday eating ahead of me, for me a holiday which was celebrated both on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day.
Then there’s New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. I still want to enjoy my meals on those days, but instead of shoveling it in as if I were a starving animal I think it will be best if I take the time to enjoy it as if it were the luxury that it really is. Instead I’ll feast on joy and laughter, and the good times with my family that I love so much. It’s that that I can enjoy with abandon without the fear of the consequences that my waistline will have to face.
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If you want to follow my weight-loss journey, read about it occasionally in my column, “Healthy steps” or you can watch my weight-loss journey unfold and show your support by liking the page https://www.facebook.com/GretchenGetFit on Facebook or following me on Twitter @GretchenGetFit.
Contact the writer at gbalshuweit@thedailyreview.com.
Healthy steps is written by Gretchen Balshuweit, news editor and now health and wellness page columnist for The Daily Review in Towanda, Pa. as she pursues her own journey to health and wellness in hopes of losing a total of 200-250 pounds of excess weight.
