Late-Year Holidays: Celebration or Natural Instinct?

This time of year is characterized by the extreme drop of temperature that occurs outside. Not only that, but it is highlighted by the numerous holiday occasions that occur around the same two-month approximate time span: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. We see these holidays simply as their main concepts: finding amusement in the unreal, celebrating those who are close to us, and sharing and caring for others. For this article, the main focus of these articles is the eating of food, something that many of us try to control, or feel guilt for the next day. However, when combining this feasting with the fact of the dropping temperatures, and by comparing that to behaviors of other species of the mammalian order, is it possible that the creation of these holidays was the product of human instinct to survive the winter?

In order to determine this, we must first determine what true instinct is. We think of instinct simply as the bird knowing to fly south for the winter, or a bear going into hibernation, without having to be taught. Then, of course by that logic, we don’t celebrate holidays by instinct, because we don’t have the knowledge to do so when we’re born, we’re taught to. However, it is animal instinct to eat before winter, as bears do before hibernating (http://library.thinkquest.org/TQ0312800/hibernate.htm), or as chipmunks hoarding nuts. A main part of these fall and winter holidays is eating, and of course we don’t think of it as a reason to eat, but part of why we eat can be put partly on the weather. In a study, people placed in a colder room naturally ate more than people in a warmer room (http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/jenlee2.htm).

We all know the true origins of these favored holidays (of course, I hope we do). These holidays surely weren’t envisioned with the ideas of eating. Even if you say that Thanksgiving was envisioned as the Pilgrims eating to a healthy winter, it was mainly made to celebrate the pilgrim’s homage to God for their safe travels, or else it would be called Foodingesting. That would be super silly (That’s what Hammer said). The food concept of these holidays seemed to have evolved over time, and maybe, humans developed these habits as natural instincts to combat the winter. Even on a ridiculous connection, note the act of trick-or-treating being similar to chipmunks scurrying from tree to tree collecting nuts in their mouths in preparation for winter (there was really no point in making that connection).

To take it a step further, many refer to a sudden sleepiness, or the itis, as a drowsiness that occurs after eating great amounts of food. As previously stated, a bear eats a large amount of food before going into hibernation. This is to store large amounts of fat that can be burned to make heat. When we eat large amounts of food, we are also storing large amounts of fat, even though we’re obviously not storing it for hibernation. However, this can, in fact, trick our bodies into a state where the body feels as though it should shut down. After we eat, our heart rates and breathing slow, similar to an animal going into hibernation, and we enter this sleepy and drowsy state that is called itis.

Hibernating is done as a way to adapt to the cold climate. Humans have the instinct to adapt to the colder climate. As stated through a previous experiment, we eat more, but in addition, we stay inside. We store more energy because we are doing less, and as a result we naturally gain weight during the winter, not only because of the eating we do during the holidays that causes some people guilt. Again, it could be natural instinct to enter this state to adapt to our surroundings, and therefore it would be human instinct to eat large amounts of food, as we do during these cold holidays.

So, for all of you people who feel guilty after the holidays for eating so much, it is only part of our instinct to eat so much when the temperature outside, as with most other mammals. It is natural to gain large amounts of fats in order to secure ourselves for the long months ahead. We may no longer have to actually brave the harsh outdoors due to our heating, but the holiday feasting was created in order to better ourselves as a population. So, feel free to eat as much turkey, stuffing, and pie as you need, it’s only natural instinct, and have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.