At The National, one of the ways in which we mark the holiday season … is to run stories reminding everyone it is not legal to slaughter animals in your home.

Health concerns are cited, as well as the 500-dirham fine (about $130).

If the campaigns were entirely successful, presumably the government wouldn’t issue announcements like the one linked, above.

The tradition of the head of the household doing the honors with the four-legged critter, for the big meals associated with the two Eids (Eid Al Fitr, after Ramadan; and Eid Al Adha, about two months later), is apparently so deeply ingrained that lots of people in the UAE just ignore the pleas to take the animals to slaughterhouses.

Again, the grassy area outside our front door in Abu Dhabi is suddenly inhabited by a small herd of goals. Six white and one black. A short-lived petting zoo, as it were.

Little kids play with the goats, and sometimes the goats get close enough to the major highway (Airport Road) that a sort of shepherd has to be designated to keep Friday’s dinner from wandering into traffic.

For a couple of decades, I worked with an outdoors writer and blogger, Jim Matthews, who is an avid fisherman and occasional hunter, and from time to time he would get angry letters from people who didn’t like to read/know about his hunting activities.

I can understand the concern, given the distance many 21st century humans have from their food sources. The idea of shooting Bambi’s mother seems … harsh.

Jim Matthews had what I thought was a telling reply: Unless you are a vegetarian, don’t give hunters a bad time. The difference between the hunter and the general meat consumer differs only in the killing and the dressing. The hunter probably did it himself; the average meat eater did not.

His idea was that confronting the concept of dead animals, face to face, was a more honest approach to dinner than it was to criticize hunters while having a burger.

Thus, I also make no judgments on the folks in my neighborhood who, pretty clearly, are slaughtering their short-term “pet” ahead of the holiday dinner.

It no doubt is a health issue, considering the unusual contents we may find in our dumpsters in the next few days. And washing out that bathtub would be a chore I would not volunteer for.

But if a person is willing to look dinner in the eye, well, they may occupy a higher (if less tidy) moral plane than do I.