Holiday menus and tasty treats figure largely at this time of year. Already, the festive dinners and seasonal parties have begun. Groaning boards are groaning, and horns of plenty are plentiful and overflowing.

The sharing of food, I’ve come to realize, is both a basic human expression of community and a universal means to create community. Around the world, we share food to reinforce traditions, beliefs and values we hold in common.

We punctuate our rituals and beliefs with the exchange of food. Friends and family gather over food to celebrate events or just celebrate the ending of another day or week.

And while we exchange food, we exchange stories. We talk, share news, discuss experiences, debate, argue, laugh, shed tears, get angry, comfort one another. Even though we profess to eschew fat, we still chew the fat.

Once we did this around the campfire, while gnawing on slabs of roasted auroch or bison. That sharing of food and stories brought us together. We communed and became community.

Read the rest of this editorial in the Victoria Times Colonist….