So, as I mentioned last week, I’m fasting on Thanksgiving.
“As protest?” a friend asked last night when I told them. “Not exactly,” I said. “I just wanted a different way to mark the day.” “And not some kind of diet thing?” “Diet? Ugh! No.”
I might have been offended by the second question, but by then I knew that an online search for “Thanksgiving and fasting” mostly delivers articles on how to keep adhering to any number of fad diets while still participating in a holiday dedicated to absorbing as many carbs as possible. It was another reminder that “fasting,” like so many other things, has been torn from earlier cultural roots and transformed into some passing trend.
I had done that search, however, precisely with an expectation of finding more examples of fasting as dissent, though I didn’t come up with any. That surprised me, given that it is an obvious form of protest; hunger strikes against colonial excess certainly have historical precedent.
Still, “protest” really isn’t the right word to describe my decision about how to observe the day. Yes, I think it makes a certain sense to fast on a holiday that some call a Day of Mourning. That doing so still runs counter to dominant portrayals and practices of Thanksgiving means it can easily be read as protest. Yet that term is limited, suggesting mostly the performative aspect of such a choice, as well as the negative work it achieves—what it counters, not what it produces.
But fasting, as those from religious traditions with fasting as a spiritual practice will know, can be undertaken as a positive action, a transformation of one’s own experience. A way to shift one’s sense of what it means to be either empty or full, and to challenge habits built on beliefs that acquiring the objects of one’s desire is the natural and best course of action.
We might say that I’m fasting because I want a better relationship to abundance. And, at least this year, I didn’t expect to gain that by partaking in the typical faux feasts of the holiday.
Really, the choice came from the gut. It started when I walked into a grocery store the week after Halloween and did a double-take at the display in the entryway: it was filled with candy canes and foil-wrapped trees. I had just passed by houses that were still plastered in piles of plastic neon orange decoration, wondering when it and all the fake spiderwebbing would come down and allow me to see the actual autumn spiderwebs and fall color, and here I was being rushed into thinking about the next consumer-driven holiday.
Staring at the over-eager Christmas display, I began to feel immensely full—that bad, bloating kind of full. Full, mostly, of the encouragement to overindulge. Tired of the message that excess is the best approach, and tired especially of how all that advertising and cultural expectation shapes my own habits, despite my best efforts to block it out and try out new practices. I’d hardly eaten any Halloween candy but the plastic-wrapped thought of it sat weighing down my stomach, and I shuddered as I entered the store and passed by a staggering tower of packaged pumpkin pies and dinner rolls. The too-muchness of it all bore down on me with the glaring florescent lights above and I almost left without picking up what I’d come for.
Anti-consumerism rants are a dime a dozen this time of year. Part of the Black Friday sale at the moral indignities shop, I guess; you can take some of the above as my contribution to this year’s supply. But the grocery store moment did lead me to listen a little more to my body, and its reaction against all those piles of sugar. Later that day, I sat in the bath and let my muscles soften and allowed my mind to think in that good, unguided kind of thinking. It was in that moment that I understood how the sense of too-muchness was also internal, not simply external. Sugar, caffeine, processed grain—all those commodities marking the residents of empire, for better or worse—were circulating in pretty thick concentrations. “How about a break?” my body seemed to ask. “Sure,” I said to myself. “Why not?”
I might as well admit that the contrarian in me liked the plan. There’s some moral high ground available where I can go do the opposite of everyone else, with good reason? Yeah, I’ll go stand there.
Though it happens that fasting and feasting, even at Thanksgiving, were once more closely linked; the fall harvest celebration was the complement to a spring Fast Day, and other discretionary feast and fast days were held throughout the year in response to specific events. There were once even national days of fasting, held until the 1860s. So my whole idea here really isn’t so novel.
Beyond my contrarian impulses, though—and more than providing an answer to the vexed question of “what am I doing for Thanksgiving this year?”—I am hoping that a fast tomorrow will allow some new insight into what it means to be in right relationship with material abundance.
I live in a world of general plenty, despite a pretty slim income pulled together from freelance and gig work. 2022 has felt especially bountiful; it’s been a year of receiving much, as I’ve had the chance to stay with friends around the country and share meals from simple to outrightly decadent. Thus much of my life this year has truly been made possible by the generosity of others. (Including those who subscribe to this newsletter—thank you!)
Clear acknowledgment of that fact leads to a desire to be something of a proper steward of the resources at hand. But in a world filled by what someone like Marie Kondo would call “clutter,” or by what I’ve referred to as “false abundance,” it can be difficult to discern what is necessary, and what is truly excess. And it can likewise be difficult to remember that going without has its virtues.
Don’t take that statement to mean that I’m a minimalist. I’m not. I probably ought to be, given how often I move, and the exceptional itinerancy of the last few years. I have tried more than once to take a trip with a minimalist approach; I usually fail. Instead, I remain a steadfast overpacker, taking the Girl Scout motto “be prepared” to occasional extremes.
Part of it is relishing being able to help others, to be the one who can rifle through their bag and pull out the exact object of need. For a recent weekend event up on Mt. Hood, I was scolding myself for overpacking yet again as we headed out the door into the rain. Then the rain turned into a downpour and a storm, and the power went out, and I was able to lend an extra pair of socks to another attendee who was cold and damp, and keep warm myself with the extra layers and extra hats I’d stuffed in my duffle. My spare headlamp and battery pack likewise both found purpose. Moments like these are my rebuff to the “lighter is better” variety of travelers out there.
One might easily prove the opposite point, however, and bring up how I hauled a massive pile of books across the country this summer, despite knowing full well that I would be met by overflowing shelves in the homes of my likewise bookish friends. There’s being prepared, on the one hand, and then there are nonsensical feelings of scarcity on the other.
But that’s the question: how to draw the distinction between just enough—and maybe enough to share—and too much? When are we being judiciously prepared, and when are we hoarding? It’s not that having is a bad thing, but it can also get in the way of receiving the unexpected; being open to receive is what connects us to others, allows us to be bound up in one another’s generosity, allows for relationship. When is feasting a true giving of thanks and a celebration of abundance, and when is it reflexive indulgence, done without listening to our bodies, both individual and collective?
I’m fasting tomorrow because, in this moment, I sense that an emptying out will heighten my appreciation for all that I have been given this year, and offer up better answers to the inquiries above. I also want to physically remember that going without is not always loss, to really know that I don’t need to be attached to owning or to excess in order to live abundantly and live well. That might be intuitive for you minimalists out there, but not always for the rest of us. And it is especially important to remember as we consider calls for reparations and land return at this time of year. Is emptying out loss? Or is it the prerequisite to reciprocal relationship and meaningful generosity?
That event up on Mt. Hood was a weekend of social singing (a new but hopefully annual gathering; if you’re curious, see rtrsong.org). One of the songs that has remained with me in the weeks since then, taught there by Thrive Choir, is a short but lovely tune by Batya Levine. The lyrics are simple, but touch on this interplay of fullness, emptiness, and generosity:
May I be empty and open to receive the light May I be empty and open to receive May I be full and open to receive the light May I be full and open to receive
Here’s the link to Levine’s Bandcamp, where you can listen to the song.
In whatever way you’re interacting with the holiday this week, I hope it speaks to you.
As always, thanks for reading. Until next time,
Meg