Well, the first two that come to my mind are the Norse Blot and the Celtic Samhain, but there’s a few parallels in various aboriginal beliefs and some of the African diasporic religions.
The Blot (pronounced. “bloat”) is the slaughter of an animal (often a boar) to be served at the Sumbel- a sort of ritual feast centered around toasting the gods, ancestors, and others deemed worthy of honoring. In the modern context, the feast itself is often referred to as a Blot, but the word properly means “sacrifice”. Other things such as wine, honey, grains, etc. are sometimes offered up as sacrifices in addition to or in lieu of an animal- Which is why the term is used more broadly. The sacrifice is seen as a way of gratefully sharing and including the gods in the folk’s good fortune- giving back, as it were.
The Celtic holiday of Samhain (pronounced “sow-en”) is the holiday which our Halloween is based upon, so it’s actually somewhat topical. Because they were an agrarian society, their holidays follow the seasons: Beltaine is the planting, Lughnasadh is the harvest of the grain, and Samhain is the culling of the livestock. (it also serves as the New Year and festival of the ancestors/dead) In this context, “sacrifice” literally means “to make sacred”, and the butchering was a central focus of the holiday. To make the point more clearly, they did not sacrifice cattle because it was a holiday, they built a holiday around the slaughter.
Also worth noting is that both of these cultures used cattle as the primary measure of wealth- So any slaughtering of a cow or bull was also a literal sacrifice in the sense of a great personal cost or trade off.
In certain Native American traditions, hunting was itself an act with religious significance, and different rituals, blessings, and thanksgiving could be attached to everything from dressing beforehand to the resulting meal. They believe that all plants, animals, and men are brothers in spirit, and that what they are doing is literally asking the animal to sacrifice itself so they can live by eating it’s flesh.
For all of these cultures, the connection to the gods, earth, and natural cycles was a central philosophy, so the acts of planting, harvesting, hunting and preparing food were essentially religious occasions. Joseph Campbell went so far as to speculate that guilt over killing for food was the very foundation of religion itself (I think it was in The Way Of The Animal Powers).
In Santeria, the Ebo is generally a sacrifice of food, alcohol, small gifts etc. to the Orisha (spirits/godforms), but the “greater” version involves animal sacrifice. In their belief system, the Orisha feed on the blood/life of the animal, while the remaining portion is shared in a community feast. (I believe there is a similar concept in Judaism where the blood needs to be drained because it harbors the spirit or life force of the animal.)
My own tradition is largely influenced by the Celts and Norse, and I spent some time on a farm purely for the sake of connecting to the life/death/rebirth cycle. So in my own practice, I killed chickens to provide food, but I did it in a way that strongly emphasized acknowledging and thanking the gods and nature spirits, as well as the animal itself for it’s sacrifice: Literally giving it’s life to sustain my own. I also watched a professional (secular) butcher slaughter pigs- It was a very different experience with no gratitude or recognition of any spiritual component, and really hammered in that idea of sacrifice=sacred.
Now, it’s my understanding that the sochet is trained not only in butchering, but also the religious aspect required to properly follow Jewish law and have an appropriate “fear of G-d”. Nearly every source I see on kosher butchering includes the term “ritual slaughter”.
Now, in your tradition- and correct me if I’m wrong- an offering to G-d is a sacrifice, where what’s offered to man is just food. In Santeria, the sacrifice is the blood for the Orisha, and the body is left for the worshipers. In Norse/Celtic tradition, the animal is ritually slaughtered and portions given both as offering and as food. In Native tradition, it is the animal who is making the sacrifice, not the hunter.
So again, aside from the parallels I see with my own tradition, I think there’s a pretty reasonable justification for applying the term sacrifice whenever the slaughter involves some sort of ritualistic religious component- Which I think the kosher process clearly does.
Sorry that’s a bit longwinded- I’ve spent a lot of years looking at this sort of thing. Also, read Joseph Campbell. Like, relevant or not, it’s totally worth it.
