The History of Holiday Feasts

Tis the season to eat birds, especially turkeys. Despite tradition and Dickens tales, few families eat goose at Christmas. Fewer eat blackbirds. Almost none set a coffin on the dining table. But Halloween traditions still skew holiday cuisine weeks after children put away costumes and masks.

Bongi's Turkey Farm in Duxbury has been raising its own turkeys for decades. Anyone who joins the gourmands waiting in line for its turkeys must think at least a bit about the history of a bird Europeans prize as quintessentially American.

Until Christianity spread across Western Europe and the British Isles, pagans ate fatted geese to celebrate the ancient New Year, Nov. 1. The Celtic Samhain festival, marking the end of the year and commemorating the dead, eventually became Halloween, a holiday still spiced with paganism. The Germanic Yupe, an end-of-harvest festival, partly merged with Halloween. Pagans ate fatted geese in rituals dedicated to Thor, hoping he would grant a fine harvest the following year. Through the Renaissance, wealthy people ate geese on Halloween, mostly from long-forgotten pagan tradition. Migratory geese arrived and disappeared mysteriously, and the large birds seemed part of a magical seasonal rhythm. Full Story

Related: religion, wicca, pagan, Christmas