Manawatu Daily Times [ESTABLISHED 21st MAT, 1875.} MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1921. CHRISTMAS CHEER.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 2002, 19 December 1921, Page 4

Manawatu Daily Times [ESTABLISHED 21st MAT, 1875.} MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1921. CHRISTMAS CHEER.

People in Palmerston North and other centres are just now busily ongaged in completing their arrangements for the Christmas festival. The linancial stringency is not going to prevent them irom killing the tatted goose, or from gorging themselves with plum pudding and other delicacies that are common to the Christmas fare. This is the season of peace, goodwill, and excessive eating and drinking. Why we lay ourselves out to test our digestive organs at this particular period is a mystery that nobody appears able to solve. But there it is. Our forefathers did it, and we, are following In their footsteps. After all, the occupation of discussing /he age of a turkey or a goose is by no means uncongenial. And, if aa English medical writer is to be regarded as an authority, we need not suffer any serious gastronomic inconvenience—provided .we are not extravagant in our indulgences. The medical man in question declares that the dinner of beef, turkey, or goose, and plum pudding and mincepies, is not an indigestible feast at all, given, of course, that no one wants to eat all the five alternatives at the same meal, or to consume an unreasonable quantity of any one of them. Turkey and plum pudding, the classical Christmas dinner, represent in plain terms the constituents of a complete diet, in which will bo found proper proportions of the proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and mineral salts, of which healthy tissue Is composed. Taken in due quantity such a meal is valuable, and should not be indigestible. In too many families Christmas is regarded as a time when all rules of feeding, as well as of economy, are suspended; the housekeeper having bought more than the family income can afford, the family proceeds to consume more than its stomach can deal with. But the important medical point is that it is not the most youthful who suffer the schoolboy who over-eats himself seldom needs any assistance beyond that which nature affords him, and his flexible organisation can deal with an unexpected strain. The man or woman beyond middle-age is in a different position, and such people undoubtedly run risks when, in response to the stimulus of a joyous occasion, they commit physiological indiscretions. Unexpected calls upon the digestive processes try'every system of the body, and when those systems, after 1 many years of work, are in conditions of stable inter-adjustment, it is unsafe to upset the machinery.