IT’S THAT time of year again and the perils are the same as they have ever been.
By tomorrow, the island’s Easter celebrants – and even most of those simply marking the holiday as time off – will be tucking into veritable mountains of the traditional flaounes or cheese pies and spitted lamb or souvla, whether or not they have been fasting during the Lenten lead-up to the celebration.
If they are inclined towards a modicum of moderation, the Easter lunch – which usually goes on solidly until at least the early hours of the afternoon – will conclude with a sated feeling free of the unpleasantness derived from gluttony.
For many, however – and it will be interesting to read the actual numbers reported for purposes of comparison with years past – there will be disagreeable trips to the hospital because of over-eating.
Indeed, doctors and nursing staff at the island’s hospitals will have been alerted to be on stand-by tomorrow, to meet the urgent demand for their services by those felled by the dictates of their appetites.
How is it we allow this to happen year after year? And what does it actually say about us as a society?
If this paper were inclined to wax psychological, it might have posited the theory that we Cypriots, as a collective, stuff ourselves silly less as a past-time, than as a means of avoiding introspection, self-reflection or engagement with modern day life’s nitty gritty and taboos.
Which is to say, instead of sweeping things that make us uncomfortable under the carpet, we reach for the fatted calf or other consumable to divert the senses before we can grapple with the tough stuff.
And of course we have all heard the theory that in our national subconscious lurks the austerity that followed ’74, so we are primed for excess now that those days are behind us.
Certainly it is a positive thing to mark holidays with our kin over a meal.
But if we were to spend a moment thinking about what might actually motivate adult individuals, and a society as a whole, to condone a day of eating till we are, literally, sick, the conclusion to be drawn is that, at best, we have tacitly agreed to indulge our senses without any feeling of responsibility toward our health – or modelling appropriate habits for our children. And at worst, that we continue to turn a blind eye to the global push for a greener lifestyle that is less costly on the earth’s resources and is sensitive to the enormous problem of food shortages that continue to increase on the planet.
You could argue that a little over-indulgence never hurt anyone – especially not when citizens of many other developed countries act in exactly the same way. But those who will be heading for hospital tomorrow might eloquently argue otherwise.
