Holiday Gak

While I love most things about the Christmas season, one of the things I don't love is what I have come to call Holiday Gak. "Gak" is a technical word which means "nutritionally empty foodstuffs." You know gak - cookies, candy, cheeze whiz.

I know I've heard that the average weight gain during this season (which I'm certain would include Thanksgiving) is 5 lbs. Of course, 78% of statistics are completely made up. But I think it's fair to say that we all eat gak we shouldn't during December.

Now here's the thing: there's gak and then there's gak. What I mean is, having a slice of your mom's homemade (insert name here) pie on Christmas is one thing. Sure, it's full of fat and calories that you don't really need, so it's technically gak. (Of course, pumpkin pie also has vitamin A in it - hurray!) But it's your mom's homemade. It's family tradition, and no one would really blame you for having a piece. But then there's GAK - the tons of candy and cookies and other stuff that get thrown around the office every day, PLUS what gets passed around as gifts.

In the last week alone, we have had at least 4 different varieties of cookies show up at work (only one homemade), 2 kinds of holiday ice cream (gingerbread men and peppermint stick), tartlets, and pie.

Plus I have received multiple packets of hot cocoa mix (and I mean the "gourmet" cocoa, which someone apprently thinks is French for "super high calorie"), plus homemade pumpkin bread, homemade caramel corn, plus of course more candy canes than I can shake a stick at, and various other festive candies, like snickers bars (which are Christmas-y because they have special holiday colors on the wrapper).

The really sad part is - what in the heck do I DO with all this stuff? I mean, I just passed up the vast majority of the gak that has littered our kitchen (although I did have a little peppermint stick ice cream - I love the stuff and one of my grandmothers always served it on Christmas, so in a weird way, it's a family tradition). But the stuff which people gave me - well, I don't want to insult anyone, since of course they mean well, but I don't want it. And the really sad part is: I cannot think of one person in my life upon whom I should pawn it off. Everyone I know:

1. is trying to lose weight
2. has medical problems
3. is already surrounded by their own mountain of gak
4. all of the above

I cannot give the homemade stuff to a shelter. (I can give the "boughten" stuff to a shelter, if I can keep my hands off it long enough.) I hate to throw away food - it's wasteful and ungrateful. I try never to buy this kind of stuff because I don't want to throw it away, and I certainly don't want to eat it.

But given the choice, I'd rather have a few homemade cookies with the family on Christmas (or the stollen which The Clam and I will be attempting next week) than the scads of calorie and fat laden semi-food that has been foisted off on me. In an odd way, I feel like a member of the bomb squad. I have dangerous stuff at my place, and I don't want to detonate it in a way that hurts me or my loved ones. I want to get it out of my place and far away, without hurting anyone.

Good grief. No wonder half our population is fat - we've turned a couple of days of feasting into a 6 week long orgy of food.

It's my understanding that Gluttony is actually considered by the Church to be one of the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins. But apparently we don't hold with that in the US of A...