(no subject)

[asterroc]

Picking up on a suggestion from tiurin, who'd be up for fasting next Thanksgiving?

Comments

[l0stmyrel1g10n.livejournal.com]

i almost did. total what i ate today:
a few ounces of leftover steak from last night's dinner
2 glasses of grapefruit juice
1 glass of cranberry juice
small slice of cherry pie

around midafternoon i started feeling sick, and lost my appetite. i only just started getting it back around the end of the meal, hence the cranberry juice and pie.

what would be the purpose of this fast? i'm probably going to eat leftover turkey tomorrow.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

If I understand correctly, tiurin's point to fasting is that in most cultures, when you wish to give thanks for the plenty that you have, you instead fast and abstain from plenty so you can see the contrast and better appreciate what you have.

[allandaros.livejournal.com]

I...already do that for a month each year. :P

While I totally grok the sentiment, I think I'll pass. Sharing a meal with family, many of whom I don't get to see much during the year, is a rare and joyous thing.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Oh hell no. I'd choose to not have the holiday at all if the holiday were a day of fasting.

In part because fasting at all is a completely miserable experience for me. I'll do it for medical reasons, but I totally hate even the "don't eat breakfast and get your blood drawn first thing" aspect of a cholesterol test. Fasting for longer stretches for surgery reasons is even worse.

And in part because turning Thanksgiving into a day of anti-celebration seems totally antithetical to what it traditionally means in my experience. Why punish yourself for not being appropriately grateful; why do that instead of celebrating what you do have, and making gratitude a good thing? Depriving myself of food for a day will not make me more grateful for the other 364 days of the year.

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that's never the reason why we fast in Judaism.