What would Thanksgiving be without platefuls of turkey and pumpkin pie? Christmas without rich eggnog and sugary cookies? Or New Year's Eve without a nightlong flow of champagne and munchies?

Food is an inextricable part of holidays--the joyous indulgences and the giddy overdoing of the season--but those with anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders are face to face with their worst enemy at this time of year.

"Mealtimes were horrible anyway, so you can imagine what Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners were like," said one woman whose two daughters, now in their 20s, had eating disorders during their teens.

"The one with bulimia would eat everything in sight, which you at first would think was a delight, because food is supposed to be a gift of love. And the one with anorexia, she had to go through these rituals. . . . The carrots had to be cut just so, the napkin had to be placed just right."

Holidays can be problematic for bulimics (who binge, then purge) and anorexics (who starve to sometimes fatally low weights), with food seemingly everywhere during this time of year, from family gatherings and office parties to big feasts and opportunities for endless nibbling.

"Holidays are socially accepted binge periods," said Dr. Harry Brandt, director of Mercy Medical Center's Eating Disorders Program in Baltimore. "It's a set-up for the battlefield of food."

"Food is in excess, and the foods that are in excess are the ones that are densely caloric," said David Roth, director of the Weight Management and Eating Disorders Institute at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital.

"The kind of people who eat in response to the sight and smell of food can get on a roll," he said. "Once they start, they can't stop."

Beyond the sheer ubiquity of food during this time of year, holidays can exacerbate unresolved problems, like depression, stress and family conflicts, that trigger either over-eating or under-eating among eating-disorder sufferers, health professionals said.

"Eating disorders are not really about eating," said Libby Champney, a social worker who leads a support group for relatives of people with eating disorders. "They're about dealing with emotional conflicts through food."

Because many eating disorders start early--the typical sufferer is a teen-age girl or young woman--they are often rooted in family problems, doctors and other health workers said.