I was once staying with a friend who was trying to teach her children the difference between 'treat food' and 'every day food'. She was explaining to them that 'treat foods' such as cake were for special occasions not 'every day eating'. She was also explaining to them that keeping special foods for special days helped keep those foods and those days all the more special.
In our current world of abundance and continuous indulgence we've lost something of the 'special foods only on special occasions' experience that was part of the pattern of peoples' lives in previous decades and centuries. Christmas used to be a time for eating foods you were unlikely to eat during the rest of the year. Sunday dinner would involve food that was more special and expensive than what would be eaten during the rest of the week.
In our current lives in richer western countries, meat, cake, nice puddings and biscuits, chocolate, alcohol, eating out etc has become so common place that we don't have such a contrast between our 'normal' eating and what special things we might consume on special occasions.
Christianity has a long tradition of eating special food to celebrate special Christian occasions. Those special occasions are even called 'feasts'.
Sundays (when we celebrate the resurrection) are always feast days, even during Lent. Some of the biggest feasts in the Christian year are Christmas & Epiphany, Easter, Ascension Day, Pentecost, Corpus Christi (when we celebrate Jesus' gift to us of Holy Communion), the Annunciation (when we celebrate Mary's yes to God when Gabriel appeared to her), the Assumption (when we celebrate Mary entering Heaven), St Michael and all Angels, and All Saints Day.
There are some other feasts celebrating how God worked through Mary and there are many saints' days throughout the year. In fact there are so many saints' days throughout the year that religious communities often categorize them into different levels of 'feasting' otherwise you would be feasting full out for over half the days in the year!
Those in religious life often have something a little special on a lesser feast, such as chocolate biscuits or a nicer than usual pudding, as a way of celebrating. On a major feast they may well have a special dinner and something extra special like cake or chocolate or a glass of wine or small bottle of beer.
This is a way of using our five senses in worship and using our bodies to help us focus on God. There is something powerful about integrating our bodies with our spiritual lives and about syncing our eating patterns with the Church year and our spiritual lives. There is also something powerful in itself in having certain food or drink that you only enjoy on certain occasions such as birthdays and Christian feasts. Like my friend said to her children, it makes those foods and those days all the more special.
If you were encouraged to write down what kinds of things you considered 'treat food' as opposed to 'every day food', what kinds of things would you write down?
How about experimenting with eating 'treat food' on Sundays, special occasions and big Christian feasts and not eating them on 'normal days'?
How does this kind of intentional and spiritually-motivated eating affect your normal days and your feast days?
Do you like the experience of syncing your eating with Christian observances?
Tips:
I find it helpful to have a 'treats tin'. If someone offers me a piece of cake that will keep a few days, it goes in the tin and I eat it on the next Sunday. I do the same if I'm somewhere with nice biscuits on offer. I take a couple so that I'm not depriving myself but I wait until Sunday or the next big feast day to eat them.
Here are a few treat ideas for feasting:
Ground coffee rather than instant
Fizzy drink or fruit juice or alcohol
Chocolate biscuits or fancy biscuits rather than plain
Chocolate
Cake
Dessert that's more exciting than yoghurt or fruit
Fruit that you can't afford as 'every day fruit'
Main course meal that is more special or expensive than what you would normally eat
The idea isn't to become obsessive or legalistic but to join the rich tradition of integrating our bodies with our spiritual lives and using what and how we eat to focus on God.