9.) Throughout the world, people use food and eating to mark the seasons, to signal changes in status (such as growing up or getting married), to honor their gods, and to say something about themselves. Holidays are culinary and sometimes people even explain why they eat certain things on these occasions. Americans do that at Thanksgiving: We eat turkey, corn, succotash, and Indian pudding because the Pilgrims ate them at the first Thanksgiving. Jewish people provide such explanations at Passover, Christians during Lent.