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Holidays
Vegetarian at Thanksgiving
by Mandy Langdon
Holiday time. The time of year to gather 'round the hearth with our families and share warmth, togetherness, and understanding. That is unless you are the only vegetarian in the family and it's Thanksgiving, the ritual every turkey has come to know and dread as their final end.
In 1994 I became a vegetarian quite by accident. I was away on vacation with my dogs and picked up a book in the cabin where I was staying that instantaneously converted me. I never touched meat, chicken, or fish again, and never saw animals again as creatures subject by rote to human ends. Later, in bits and pieces, I came to understand the environmental and health issues around animal farming and consumption, but it is the humane aspect that I always see as my reason for abstaining from meat.
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Two years went by before anyone in my family noticed I had stopped eating meat. It may have come up once or twice but I think they believed I was caught up in a passing fancy like so many others they've seen over the years. The first time I realized they took me seriously was the year I came to Thanksgiving and not one single dish on the table-including the salad-was without meat. I never knew you could bake bread with livers in it, and I had been presented with the litmus test. They wanted to see if I was for real, if I would hold my ground. This is when the fireworks began.
I sipped my glass of wine and nibbled on a piece of sandwich bread just to tide myself over until I could eat something later. The jackals, with all due respect to the family I love, descended upon me with what seemed like delight. "You're being absurd!" they hooted, shoveling flesh dripping with gravy into their mouths. "If I had to feed my family I'd hunt a cow down and kill it!" my brother pointed out. "You know," an older woman who has served as a surrogate mom to me for many years offered, "I believe prayer began with ancient man out of guilt for the killing of animals." To round out the offensive, a friend said gleefully, "Plants cry too!" And me, there sipping, the brunt of the uproarious fun.
Not long after that dinner-it may have been the following Thanksgiving-the roasting of the "token vegetarian" became my family's newest and favorite holiday tradition. This would have been year four of my fast from meat, and any timidity I had about my practice or lack of knowledge I had about farming or what vegetarianism really means had vanished. This was the holiday season where I had begun leafletting supermarket shoppers with literature about turkey farming in America, one of the most barbaric practices we know of. I had become one of those: an animal lover with a fierce conviction about animal cruelty, much like the nutty French actress who once enjoyed the envy of every American girl in the 60's, and who now lives alone with hundreds of cats, using her faded celebrity as a platform to scold others for eating meat.
So the roast began that Thanksgiving afternoon. I had long since learned to bring at least three dishes of my own to dinner, to share with others and to insure I got something in my stomach, as my family had taken to eliminating everything vegetarian from their holiday menu, on principle. People at the table would surreptitiously pass up the platters that came their way with my food on them, in solidarity to their carnivorous comrades. Once in a while someone would accidentally gobble down a bite of my mashed potatoes and start "ohhing" and "ahhing" only to be elbowed by their neighbor to shut up, it was the nutty girl's dish. That afternoon it began with the friend who had once explained to me that plants cry too. He invited this time a response, by posing his attack as a question rather than a joke or statement. I put down my fork, and I told him why it was a problem to eat turkey, or cow, or pig or chicken. I had until then reserved my knowledge for the arena in which it was solicited, away from the table. But that day, they heard it all. And that day, they also chose to ignore it all.
Though never brought down by the hordes at Thanksgiving again, I did get ridden by them about my dietary principles when I was pregnant, just short of being accused of being a bad mother for depriving my fetus of protein by not eating meat. That fetus became a beautiful eleven-pound baby girl, who has never been vaccinated and who has never had an ear infection or serious fever.
No one has ever admitted that the strife they had dispensed was indeed absurd or unnecessary. The odd comment pops up now and then during the first course and I usually just smile and let it pass. After nine years of vegetarian holidays, they have finally enjoyed the mashed potatoes, cranberry stuffing and eggplant gratin that I bring to the table, even if on the sly. Once in awhile, I even hear an unguarded "oohh" or excited "ahhh" from an unsuspecting guest, and I figure it's ok if they have no idea it's vegetarian. What they don't know, well, maybe it won't hurt them.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Read also:
Creating Holiday Traditions
Have a Very Vegan Thanksgiving
Fun and Compassionate Family Ideas for the Holidays
Vegan Pumpkin Pie
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