Food and the Pilgrim

Foreword

There was a time, not so long ago, that humans were a regular part of the food chain. We humans seem to be a tasty lot. Over time, we managed to climb to the top of the food chain, just to realize that the bigger our brains and bodies got, the fewer defences we had against the smallest of our enemies. We should not as much fear the lion as bacteria and viruses, which Covid-19 has effectively demonstrated. Food has been a reason for love and hate, peace and war, and its inequal availability and access around the globe is a continuous worry.

Pilgrimage and food are related to the earliest days of religion, and pilgrimage is probably the oldest form of organized travel in which people engaged when not primarily gathering food or looking for new hunting grounds. The earliest pilgrimages took place during the Upper Palaeolithic, c. 70,000 years ago, with the purpose of engaging in rituals associated with the fulfilment of perennial human needs, food being one of them. Such travel did not disturb the living patterns of travellers very much, as they could hunt and forage along the way. These early pilgrimages were voyages to distant, sacred places for the purpose of religious rituals by means of dance, song, and art made by their fellow Palaeolithic cave painters. Ritual food would have been at the forefront, used to ask the deities for a prosperous hunt.

Many authors who mention the Palaeolithic hold that life in those days had much more leisure, with the people enjoying a healthier and longer life than those in the following Neolithic and Bronze Ages who farmed and were land-bound. With settled life on the land, perspectives on food shifted. Larger tribes and villages had to be fed from the land, and agriculture required more complicated rituals, for instance for sacrificing animals. Agriculture demanded backbreaking toil and left little time for leisure. Elaborate thanksgiving rituals followed the harvest. Surviving the lean period between the last harvest in autumn and the birth of the first ewes in spring gave rise to what we now know as Lent, or the fasting period: religion inspired the survival of the tribe by prescribing a fasting period so that the whole community could survive on less food.

People’s long experience with food also led to wisdom of what to eat and what not to eat, what natural products were safe, poisonous, medicine, or better used for dyes or decoration. Predators were sorted out, and competitors for food were tamed and domesticated. Some animals became labelled as ‘dirty’, while others were revered. Lamb has always been a preferred sacrificial animal, even in religion; the Lamb of God is just one example.

Even today, pilgrims require daily sustenance. While that may depend on the spiritual and religious motivations of the visitor, food choices are an extension of those mental processes that arouse, direct, and integrate the visitor’s behaviour during the faith-based experience. Since various religions consider consumption and dietary patterns as another key element of defining a specific religious identity, food should be seriously considered as not simply an extension but also a crucial part of faith-based tourism and pilgrimage. After all, religious fasting and feasting rhythms are basically driven by two clearly delineated parameters: deliberate and planned abstention from particular foods during fasting periods and those religious guidelines that require specific food processing and preparation. Amid such clarity, the level of adherence varies since different faith groups provide an array of dietary rules ranging from strict to rather loose and flexible practices that empower the believer to apply personal discretion.

This volume has gathered chapters that will provide such clarity as well as a closer understanding of what food choices pilgrims and faith-based tourists make and how much influence religion has on their food intake, diet, or abstinence. The chapters also underscore that lived religion and prescribed religion are not the same when it comes to food and that our human diversity gives rise to many grey areas.

The editors

Dane Munro, Noel Buttigieg, and Daniel H. Olsen

1 Introduction to Food and the Pilgrim: Nourishment for Pilgrims and Faith-Based Tourists

Humans want to have their food and eat it, just like the proverbial cake. They are anxious to acquire their supply and to organize a good part of their day getting and preparing it for consumption. Food is more than a fuel for the body. In the words of Roland Barthes, ‘An entire “world” is present in and signified in food. … [It] transforms itself into situations and performs a social function, it’s not just physical nourishment’ (Barthes 1997: 21). Since time immemorial, humans have developed an elaborate set of symbolic concepts revolving around ‘bread’ as nourishment in its broadest sense – reflections of human activities and relationships.

Food is an important channel that promotes self-understanding. It reveals behaviours and social interactions among peoples (Bell and Gill 1997). As Douglas H. Boucher in The Paradox of Plenty: Hunger in a Bountiful World opines:

Food is a window which allows us to look into any society, anywhere in the world, and determine critically important things about its structure. … Food is a window that can illuminate a broad variety of forces acting within a society. (Boucher 1999: 335)

These ‘variety of forces’ are regularly practised through exchange, moments that allow humans to use food as another medium to define individual and group identity. Food is a sensitive means of social exchange. As anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (1972: 215) aptly observes: ‘By comparison with other stuff, food is more readily or more necessarily shared’. It highlights basic elements of cooperation; assistance and partnership; and the lifeline of basic social units such as the family group.

Arjun Appadurai (1986) considers food as a commodity with a social valence. Appadurai studies food in close relation to other kinds of exchange, mainly gifts and goods. His idea of the ‘social life of things’ highlights the constant ‘dialogue’ that flows between human beings and the material world where objects acquire particular meanings. The psychological/emotive relationship that exists between individuals and their ability to create signifying objects also recognizes them as means to ennoble particular aspects of human existence. In other words, we produce, process, and consume food, but at the same time, food serves utilitarian and social functions.

Food is an important source of connection. As a means of exchange, food generates a universal understanding of connectedness within all cultures. Self-denial or refusal of communion generates a sense of rejection. The intentional refusal to eat ruptures the latent meanings normally construed by this form of exchange. Resistance to common nourishment implies a breakdown in the significance of food as a medium intended also to construct sociability. The decision not to recognize the giving or sharing of food puts pressure on power dynamics between the food provider and the recipient. In the words of Marshall Sahlins:

Food dealings are a delicate barometer, a ritual statement as it were, of social relations, and food is thus employed instrumentally as a starting, a sustaining, or a destroying mechanism of sociability … Food offered in a generalised way, notably as hospitality, is good relations … food not offered on the suitable occasion or not taken is bad relations. (Sahlins 1972: 215–216)

Similar to Sahlins, Mauss considers exchange as an act of sociability as long as the act to give, to receive, and to reciprocate keeps all parties involved in a continuous loop. The performance of all three acts can generate discord and undermine reciprocal relationships once any of the parties decides to refuse receiving or giving sustenance to others. In the case of Mauss, the gift often takes the form of food. Amid his interest in primitive societies, gifts of food became mediums of recognizing, declining, or resisting power (Mauss 1990).