Christmas Day is here! I've already opened my carefully selected presents and I sit down before a true feast. In front of me is slow-roasted ham, whose gravy will top my hand-crushed potatoes. The green beans are overcooked to nostalgic perfection. Jalapeño cornbread casserole, biscuits, orange jello and moist stuffing are passed around the table. For the second year, I pour myself a glass of red wine and I have chocolate milk on the side for good measure. What an amazing assortment of proteins, fats and carbohydrates I am about to consume. But I consider myself a health-conscious eater—how cruel a punishment is the feast for my intestinal system? Should I be worried?

I reach for my fork to dig in when I hear a pop and feel a slight weight on my right shoulder. I glance down and find that a miniature Megan Fox has alighted there. She is wearing little more than a tiny santa hat and I can see a pair of gnarled horns poking through the white felt. Whoah, I think, this is not normal. I go back to eating and try to pretend that nothing happened. A few minutes later I peak back at my shoulder and there is Megan Fox, looking a little disgruntled. I hear another pop on my left shoulder. I turn to see a fat little man wearing a paper pilgrim hat and a shoddy gray suit.

"Oh my, what a glorious feast," he says.

"I must be going crazy," I tell him. No one at the table has noticed my pint-sized companions. I figure that I can at least hide my insanity for a while and maybe make it through dinner, if I can only keep eating like nothing is—
"Ouch!"

Megan Fox is yanking on my earlobe. "You aren't going to eat all this, are you?" she says. "This is definitely not healthy."

"Excuse me, my dear," replies my other lilliputian friend, "but you must not keep a man from his meat. And could you please put on a more prudent outfit. This is a holy day!"

"Oh shut up. You look like an overgrown rat. Who are you?"

"I'm Ben Franklin, and who are you?"

"I'm Megan,” she says, turning back to me, “and I am very serious about this meal. Feasting like this is completely unhealthy! How many plates of food have you had?"

"Two," I say out of the corner of my mouth behind a big bite of stuffing.

"You see," she says, "you will eat more today than you would normally eat in a week. Find me a nutritionist that says gluttony is a healthy habit."
 

"No disrespect, my dear, but if this mildly active young man wants to indulge in a large meal once or twice on holiday, he has every right."
 

"But he is promoting an unhealthy eating culture! Look at this country. We have a higher obesity rate than any other country in the world [1], and obesity-related diabetes is quickly becoming an epidemic."
 

"I appreciate that you've done your homework," says Ben, "and I admit that your knowledge surprises me, but I also keep up on current events and I assure you that this holiday meal is not an unhealthy one." Just then I notice a pair of sleek gray wings poking up over Mr. Franklin's shoulders. "I am just as conscious as you of the danger, and irony, of a country that was born with so little and now overstuffs itself to an unhealthy flush."
 

Megan is starting to look a little flustered. She leans out over my nose and pokes a finger at him. "If you are so health-conscious, why don't you count the calories in this meal. He just shoveled a bite of cobbler into his mouth that could feed a horse."

 
I am feeling a little self-conscious about my chewing now, and I have a strange fear that our Christmas meal will end like Animal Farm.

Ben grabs a tuft of my hair and leans out to make his argument. "Before you start counting calories, Ms. Fox, let us consider where the feast began. Consider for instance the life of the wild hominid from which you evolved."
 

I cough, and my little friends swing treacherously. "You were born a century before Charles Darwin," I whisper, "what do you know about evolution?"
 

"Sir Charles Darwin delivers a comprehensive lecture on evolution every few decades. (Enlightenment, you will find, is a very long process.) Now, to return again to your prehistoric ancestor, that wonderful primate has himself evolved to survive a very tough existence. He must eat when he can and that may be very irregularly as his food supply is entirely dependent on the  whims of nature, and not carefully and methodically controlled like your own. When your ancestor comes across a feast like the one that sits before us, he must pounce and eat as much as possible, storing excess energy for long, hungry days ahead. The food may be a slight shock to his system, but it is absolutely healthy."
 

"Fine," says Megan, "that may be true, but we have had at least ten thousand years of agriculture to steady our diets. We aren't chimpanzees, Ben," she drawls sarcastically.
 

"You are correct, we are not chimpanzees. But for two reasons, I believe that feasting is a healthy and desirable habit. First, despite our agriculture, we were and still are a struggling species—with a few lucky exceptions. Your not-so-distant ancestors struggled for their meals. Many of them would only have eaten comfortably on holidays like Christmas. We are still a species that feasts and feasts happily. The true dilemma is that your urge to feast is so easily satisfied in this world! Anorexia and diabetes are the offspring of evolution and overproduction."
Megan scoffs. "Fine, but it's not necessary to feed those urges. When we feast, we only make healthy eating more difficult for ourselves."
 

"Then I have for you a second argument. The feast is one of the few social activities for which we must be physically present. In a world of "video chats" and "second lives," we must cling to those few visceral activities that bring us together. Many parts of Christmas have fallen to the wayside, but eating remains; eating has saved Christmas."
 

I turn to Megan "I think he won," I say. She looks downtrodden and clings tightly to my earlobe.

I reach to flick her away when a miniature Shia LaBeouf drops onto my finger, shouts "MEGATRON!!!" and brandishes a toothpick.
 

"Dammit, I will not have Michael Bay ruining my hallucinations." The three of them disappear with a pop, and I swear off eating old Chinese leftovers, no matter how interesting my bacteria-induced hallucinations have become.
 

1. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity