The annual ‘Holiday Season’ in North America more or less officially begins during any given year on the fourth Thursday of November, with Thanksgiving; and it pretty much ends on 6 January of the following year, with Three-Kings Day aka Epiphany aka Saint Nicholas’s Day. Over the years, it has become a time of gift-giving as well as a time of religious observances — and most of all, even for totally-secular folks, it’s a time of feasting on foods that aren’t always served very often during the rest of the year. Never mind that some scholars now believe that Jesus Christ was actually born during approximately the month of April in 4 BC or 5 BC.
How Non-Christian Religions Celebrate Christmas
The other Abrahamic religions have also more or less gotten on board, although they don’t officially celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. North American Jews took a traditional but minor Jewish festival, Hanukkah aka Chanukah aka The Festival of Lights, which can occur at any time from late November to late December, and elevated its importance primarily so that Jewish children wouldn’t feel left out during the Christmas season. Muslims celebrate the end of their month of Ramadan, during which they’re supposed to fast and not feast during all daylight hours, with feasting on their Eid-al-Fitr holiday; because Ramadan is scheduled based on the Islamic lunar calendar, which just 354 days in each year rather than 365 days, it can fall within the ‘Holiday Season’ in some years.
From Pagan Harvest-Time Celebrations to Thanksgiving feasts
In our World’s Northern Hemisphere, Harvest-Time celebrations derived from ancient Pagan practices have evolved into our present-day Thanksgiving holiday. British Christianity co-opted the Pagan Harvest-Time feasting tradition; and, when the Christian English Pilgrims arrived in the New World, they celebrated their first completed Harvest season in November 1621, together with the local Wampanoag Amerindians, with whom they were still getting along with well as of that time. (Later on, not so well.) The Pilgrims shot four wild turkeys, and the Wampanoags killed and brought five deer, so there was plenty of high-protein food for everyone to eat. The tradition that the Pilgrims began, of eating roasted turkey at Thanksgiving feasts, continues to this day; as for eating venison on Thanksgiving Day, not nearly so much.
Kwanzaa: A New Harvest-Time Holiday
A United States African American guy invented another week-long Harvest-Time holiday, Kwanzaa, about fifty years ago, to fall during the very last week of the year. By now Kwanzaa seems to have caught on, at least a bit.
The shortest day of the year, the Winter Solstice falls about three weeks into December. However, except for a few modern NeoPagans, celebrating it is no longer a particularly big deal today.
Traditional Thanksgiving Foods
Certain foods are traditionally served and eaten, during North American Thanksgiving feasts that probably are much less commonly consumed during the rest of the year:
- MEATS — roasted turkey, roasted ham
- OTHER ENTREES — cornbread, corn-on-the-cob, sweet potatoes, mixed vegetables, onions
- SIDES — cranberry sauce, apple cider. eggnog, turkey gravy
- DESSERTS — pumpkin pie, oatmeal cookies, pudding, candy canes
4 Tips To Manage Diabetes During The Holidays
So, what’s a person concerned about their nutrition, in particular, a Diabetic, to do in the face of this massive onslaught of rich Holiday food?
1. Reduce The Sugar Intake
First of all, several of these foods can in principle be prepared either with lots and lots of sucrose (table sugar), or with much less sucrose: sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, apple cider, pumpkin pie. oatmeal cookies, and perhaps even puddings. In particular, plain cooked sweet potatoes and carrots have a lot to recommend them as foods — in particular, they’re high in beta carotene, which our guts then turn into Vitamin A. But sweet potatoes or carrots served under a thick coating of brownish or reddish high-sugar glaze are obviously in some ways not so good for our bodies! Even eggnog can be made without a huge amount of sucrose to sweeten it up.
2. Go Easy on the Gravy
Second, even if you have no control nor influence over the selection, cooking, and serving of your Holiday feast, you can still control what Holiday foods you choose to fill up on. Roast turkey, perhaps in North America the most universal Holiday food of all, is very good for your body; you can choose to fill up on that, along with just enough cranberry sauce and/or apple cider to make it go down your throat easily. The turkey’s body cavity may have been filled before roasting with bread-based stuffing, which may be OK, or may not be so OK; stuffing, made with dark bread and lots of onions may be just fine health wise. But go easy on that turkey gravy.
3. Be careful with the Alcoholic Drinks
Third, you can be especially conscientious about sticking to your normal medications plan, and about getting enough sleep, and about not going overboard with alcoholic drinks, despite the Holiday-Time hustle-bustle and schedule upheavals.
4. Control your Blood-glucose Levels With CLE Holistic Health Naavudi
Fourth, you can try out CLE Holistic Health Naavudi, which is a blend of nine different herbal extracts — all of which have been used in traditional Asian medicine for centuries or even for millennia to help folks to control their blood glucose levels, their Diabetes, and their tendencies to gain weight. Each of these ingredients is potent and effective on its own, and they combine synergistically in Naavudi to reinforce each other’s actions and thus to be even more effective. CLE Holistic Health takes the approach, quite unique in the health-supplements industry, of controlling the production of its herbal health remedies from start to finish; CLE grows its own herbs organically on its own farming plots of land, directly manages their harvesting and processing using its own proprietary methods to obtain herbal extracts, combines these extracts in proportions derived from experience and good science, and then packages them into precisely-measured 550-milligram vegetarian capsules, to ensure excellent final product quality control and freedom from contaminants. And Naavudi is not believed to interact with any prescription medications, so you don’t have to depart from your established medicinal regime to try it out. So, why don’t you see if Naavudi can help you to get through your Holiday feasting without becoming bloated, and/or without having your blood-glucose level go wild?