Overeating and tradition

It's the time of year when many Christians, former Christians, as well as those who want to jump on the bandwagon, so to speak, celebrate the end of the calendar year with at least one feast day, Christmas. It's no coincidence that the day to honor Christ's birth falls around the winter solstice. It is the gloomiest part of the northern hemisphere year, the start of winter, and a time for embracing any excuse for indulging in light, heat, and ample food (and drink). The Roman (pagan) feast of Saturnalia falls around this time, and we all know that the Romans were party animals.

Today is one of the two ironic days of the solar year. It marks the beginning of winter - yet tomorrow the days start growing longer until we reach the summer solstice (around June 21). That day is the first day of summer, of course, but it also heralds the shortening of the daylight hours all the way up to Dec. 21 or 22.
If you look at a calendar from 100-200 years ago - say, 1800 - you will see how many saints' days there were. People were expected to fast on certain days, feast on others. I suppose this was a system that had been worked out (not necessarily "planned" by an elder or a committee, though who knows what kind of control went on, way back when?) to help with food distrubution amongst the populace. It was normal to go without all food for a day or two, or without certain foods - usually scarcities like land animals and their products - for a longer period, e.g., Lent. Later, there was a feast of some kind. The entire year was broken up into this on/off pattern, not just at major holidays like Easter.
When people now laugh about overeating at Christmas, they are simply honoring tradition, if you really think about it. The trouble is, they do not honor tradition all the time! They never fast. They never go without certain foods as a way of 1) respecting scarcity; 2) valuing the foods they consume by going without them from time to time (absence makes the heart grow fonder). That lopsided "traditional" behavior contributes, no doubt, to the epidemic of obesity in Western countries, the plague of food waste, the proliferation of intense farming operations, and the attendant environmental pollution and animal cruelty. More appreciative consumers would better honor the living beings who feed them.
Maybe it's time to bring back some of the old ways - while we still have the freedom to choose to abstain. Any future scarcities - leading to local or widespread famine - will force us to go without luxuries and maybe without minimal daily nutrients. How about starting a fashion for pre-holiday fasts? They wouldn't involve starvation, just selective abstinence and calorie reduction. How much better roasted bird and high-calorie desserts would taste after a week of bean soup and dry crackers!

HAPPY SOLSTICE!

Holding onto Summer

It's still warm outside, but already the sun is winking over the mountain (where I live) a little later every morning, signalling to my deep brain that the summer is edging away. Soon, the days will be significantly shorter. In their "deep brains," plants will start shutting down and birds will prepare for migration. The science of such signs - day length, mean daily temperature, flowering rates, animal sightings, etc. - is called phenology. The deep brain, of which I speak, is the part - call it instinct, if you prefer - that learned long ago to respond to nonverbal signs in the environment (and probably branched out to pick out cues from other people, too). It's only a few years ago that I noticed how a certain time of year would bring on a mood: the phenological data were reminding me on a visceral level of an event (sad, bitter, regretful, whatever) that had happened at the exact same time, years before.
[This year, I am remembering several happy-sad experiences I had exactly a year ago. Even if I am preoccupied with other duties, the very act of going outside in similar weather brings those experiences back to the surface. And the emotions that accompanied them come rushing back as well.]

Spring is a special season because of its association with rebirth, but summer's a virtual synonym for leisure, fun, relief from school or work, time with people we care about, and - most of all - bountiful food. Most people in western countries might not think of the food aspect too much; after all, air transport has wiped out much of the seasonality of most food stuffs for us here. If you can get something in January as easily as you can in July, that plus side of summer is less noticeable.
But there's no denying that local, seasonal produce is best. Even before the locavore movement, or the 100-Mile Diet, people extolled the qualities of June strawberries, July tomatoes, and August blueberries.
Is there some way of holding onto that taste, that delight? Is it possible to extend the shelf life of a summer's day?
The most prosaic answer is yes: dry, freeze, or can the produce at its peak and enjoy it in somewhat degraded but still delicious form throughout the year, even in deepest winter, when the only tomatoes, peaches, and strawberries available taste like cardboard. 
Here's one set of instructions to start: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/aug/07/nigel-slater-classic-soft-jam
I have never canned anything - a series of small kitchens (including the present one) put an end to any such ideas. But I have had a lot of fun making soup ingredients with a food dryer, and hope to do so again soon. I also freeze wild blueberries, red and black currants, and my own black raspberries. I held off the last batch as long as February, and served them at a special meal. The fact that I had picked most of them myself made it even more special.
I will embrace autumn when it arrives, and even enjoy winter, but I am not ashamed of holding onto summer as long as I can.