It goes something like this: indulge from Thanksgiving to New Year’s—a small pittance for the magnitude of deprivation we suffer throughout the year at the hands of our careers, our commitments and the cost of our desires. Then begin a war of eradication against the surplus of self that shrouds our bodies when we look at them in the mirror. There is a marble statue in there somewhere, if only someone would stop stocking the fridge with beer.

Food doesn’t have to be religion.