Free range turkeys. Kathy Rudy says eating local this holiday can be done but requires planning.

Durham, NC - Most of what we associate with holiday festivities has been handed down to us by our parents and grandparents. Perhaps it's that special cranberry sauce, flavored with orange peel. Or those candy-sweet Clementine tangerines that make such great snacks. Or the turkey, stuffed with chestnuts, sausages and apple slices.

These are the things that make the holidays special for us.

The problem with many of these foods is that they are not grown sustainably. Our parents and perhaps even our grandparents developed these traditions inside a food market designed to foster large monocultural agribusiness. In the last 60 years, our food has increasingly been sourced from far-away places, where it has been grown and harvested much differently than at any time in human history.

Where 60 years ago, plant products were grown in closed-system small farms, now they are grown on mass scale huge farms. Instead of caring for the health of the soil, these large farms are invested in increased profit. Chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers replace what nature once provided, and genetic modification has made many foods taste very different.

In terms of animals, our Thanksgiving turkey and our Christmas roast beef are now riddled with hormones and antibiotics. Industrial farming harms the environment in several ways: It uses too much fuel to get the food to our table, it degrades topsoil at an unprecedented rate, and it pollutes the air and water with unnatural chemicals and large amounts of animal waste. Most importantly, industrial food hurts us humans by compromising our health. Rising rates of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer evidence the fact that something is drastically wrong with the way we're eating.

In the last five years there has been a growing interest in eating locally. Dozens of books and documentary films, from Michal Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" to last year's award-winning "Food Inc," extol the virtues of local eating. Returning to small sustainable farms for our food, these new works tell us, means everybody wins. Eating seasonably means the food is fresher, it travels less to get to our table and is picked only when ripe, not before. The soil is cared for through rotating crops and animals, no chemicals are released into our community (or any one elses). The animals we eat have much happier lives, they don't need drugs to prompt them to eat or to keep them free of disease; consequently we don't ingest those drugs through our meat. And their waste goes to fertilize soil for next year's crops (rather than in lagoons which pollute surrounding ground water).

Everybody wins, indeed.

The problem with eating seasonally and locally, though, is that many of our cherished "traditional" foods are not grown locally. Here in North Carolina, there are no cranberries or citrus, for example. And when it comes to meat, the local free range versions are much more expensive than the holiday meats grown industrially. In fact, many advocates of local eating suggest that holidays are a time to "back down" from a commitment to local eating. Holidays, many say, are a time when exceptions must be made in order to allow us to keep with family traditions.

I disagree.

Holidays like Thanksgiving are exactly the time to challenge ourselves to find and define new food traditions. The wealth of offerings at all local farmer's markets certainly provide enough for us. In some cases the substitutions are easy: The mashed potatoes we used to get from Idaho or New Zealand can easily be replaced by the buttery tasting fingerlings available right now. The cranberries and citrus might give way to the hundreds of different kinds of pumpkins, gourds, and berries grown locally. Local pecans or walnuts can easily replace chestnuts. And while the local turkey or roast beef might cost more, it is worth more as well. There is no way to put a price tag on environmental degradation, animal suffering and human health.

Our parents and grandparents got one thing right: Traditions are important. But with the wealth of information coming out about the value of local eating, perhaps it's time we returned to the traditions of our great grandparents and older ancestors and resumed eating locally.

Editor's Note: After the original posting of this story, we heard from a Nicholas School employee that it's not too late yet to put in turkey orders at at least one local farm. Click here to get more information from Woodcrest Farm.