A Note To My Christmas Dinner

In my heart I know that making the conscience choice to eat another living creature, killed only so I can enjoy it, is probably not the right thing to do. Just as I know that, even though millions of years of evolution have made me crave meat, I now have a variety of acceptable alternatives that could easily keep me healthy and well fed. That being said, I love meat.

This afternoon I perfectly roasted a 14lbs, Kosher, organic, grain-fed, brined, turkey that produced some of the finest gravy ever made. So maybe it is a fetish, a perversion that allows me to do something that I know is probably wrong, but feel the need to do it anyway because I like it so much. Maybe that is why I don’t give a second thought to how and why this turkey was given life only to have it brutally taken away. I guess that I could have insisted on its humane treatment while it was alive, but really that’s missing the point. Nothing will change the fact that this delicious looking dead creature lived and died so that I could find it yummy. And somehow that really doesn’t bother me enough as it probably should.

Call it the evolutionary programming, my apathetic or underdeveloped sense of morality or maybe it’s something more akin to the norms and moral of my culture, but I just can’t convince myself that it’s ethically evil enough to stop. Sure, I’ve seen the videos of slaughterhouses and the disgusting environments that most of the animals that we eventually decapitate and disembowel live in; just as I’ve killed and eaten several creatures. I have been present at, been part of and have experienced life leaving a body both voluntarily and involuntarily, and yet I cannot mentally link the two with something that I will soon eat.

So I’m sorry, sort of. I know that you had a horrible existence, brought into consciences only to live in deplorable conditions and die at a young age. I am sorry that your cooked, dead corpse is now resting on my counter, so that body you once called your own still retains the same juiciness it had before your head was mechanically separated from the rest of your body. I am sorry that I used your entrails to make a sauce that I will soon ladle over a plate full of sliced you meat. But most of all, I’m sorry that I just can't bring myself to stop. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to carve you up and devour you without feeling immoral or dishonest in any way. And for that, I apologize.