I've heard now of at least two different religious traditions that have some ceremonial meal in which the range of life experience of the past or coming year is embraced via food, and there is always something bitter included in the mix.

This seems like wisdom to me. I don't know which food would represent melancholy and and which anxiety. Joy would be the Cadbury Caramel Egg I just had. The mundane would be a cold lunchmeat sandwich. Pain would be jalapenos. I suppose anxiety might be raw hamburger on rye that they used to serve at Milwaukee New Year's celebrations. ;^) And I guess depression would be the same thing every meal - something disagreeable that sets the stomach whirling.

I wonder whether people truly eat it all up. One of my favorite lines from a song: "Love a girl who holds the world in a paper cup, she likes to drink it up." I like my tea cold and unsweetened, maybe I can learn to like the contents of my paper cup the same way in time.