Eating Turkey at Christmas

Eating turkey at Christmas is exhausting (note that when shaved and eaten in a sandwich any old day, it is less exhausting). It could be the red wine and beer, or the Bloody Mary. But I believe it is mostly the consumption of turkey (and a little bit of ham, pork and potato salad, but mostly turkey).

I am not entirely sure whether it is the physical act of eating turkey that is so tiring or the flesh of the turkey itself. One moment I am enjoying, the next I am curled up on the couch drooling slightly with my eyes crossing and my lids drooping down pathetically. My face grows slack, almost floppy, while my neck rolls my head around circularly. One hand is resting protectively on my stomach, the other sort of holds a wine. The wine is moments away from its demise. One leg is generally strewn over the edge, dangling just above the floor.

I don’t usually nap. It is just something, a fad even, that I have never embraced. But when I eat turkey I don’t only nap, I pass out like a drunken baby having their afternoon lie down after a period on the White Russians.

Turkey knocks me out.

Indeed, it’s amazing I can actually type this. And to be honest, I have been writing it between bouts of uncontrollable and slightly disconcerting snoring, punctuated by sleep-shouting: ‘just one more leg.’ I feel it gripping my insides now, racing along my adrenal glands to force me into another few coma-ridden moments. I can almost hear it making that turkey gobble noise.

Christmas is exhausting enough, but you add turkey into the mix and it suddenly becomes a day built primarily around arriving at siesta. Maybe this is somehow representative or reflective of Jesus? Is that why we devour turkey at Christmas? To faster arrive at some infant-like sleep symbolic of Jesus in his manger?

Or is that it is really delicious and conducive to large gatherings of people? Do we eat it then for the sake of tasty convenience? Is it representative of nothing except its ease of serving in a bustling modern world?

(And by ‘we’ I mean middle class white folk … so this may be sort of limited in its assumption of universal turkey eating during Christmas.)

I’m not really sure. I just think eating turkey is exhausting. This I am sure of. Now, to sleep.