amanita muscaria and christmas
It is a connection that I never considered but makes all the magical sense. From the colors, to the pine tree, the reindeer, to the chimney here is a little story of the relation between magic mushrooms and Christmas as we know it.
Every Christmas, with a few variations here and there, children of all backgrounds await Santa’s arrival and gift dispersal. He comes flying in across the moon, in the still of the cool winter night, stars above, and chimneys below. His reindeer guide him on his trip to your home. He climbs down the chimney and leaves presents beneath pine trees to all the good children of the world, in one night. Dressed in red and white, Santa Claus is otherworldly, never seen.
What a wondrous vision.
Of course, there are those who disagree and see not a connection only a coincidence. But, according to John A. Rush, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology at Sierra College, the legend of a jolly, giving, being sliding down your chimney to leave gifts comes from Siberian Shamans in the Arctic. "As the story goes, up until a few hundred years ago these practicing shamans or priests connected to the older traditions would collect Amanita muscaria (the Holy Mushroom), dry them, and then give them as gifts on the winter solstice," Rush told LiveScience in 2012. These shamans gifted mushrooms to locals and chose to drop them in through smoke hole openings in their yurts because snow prevented them from coming in the front door. What’s more, the shamans dried the mushrooms by hanging them on the branches of trees.
Chimney, gift giving, and tree decorations. Triple check. Next we have the tradition of Pine trees brought into homes and colorful gifts placed beneath them. The symbiotic relationship between conifers and Amanita Muscaria may explain that one. This popular red and white mushroom is native to the Northern Hemisphere and has a mycorrhizal relationship with conifers. They engage in a mutually beneficial relationship at the root level. Fungi do not photosynthesize and therefore are not able to create their own energy from the sun as plants do. The fungi receive sugar from the trees and the trees, or plant host, receive phosphorus and nitrogen from the fungi. As James Arthur writes in Mushrooms and Mankind, people bring pine trees into their homes and place bright gifts under them at Winter Solstice “because, underneath the pine bough is the exact location where one would find this 'Most Sacred' substance, the Amanita muscaria, in the wild."
And finally the reindeer. These migrating animals “travel more than 600 miles to get to their summer grazing grounds” making one of the “world’s great large animal migrations.” They are native to Northern Europe and Asia where indigenous herders like the Nenet in Russia’s Arctic use them for their meat. Both shamans and reindeer alike ingested magic mushrooms. Reindeer were considered the spirit animals of the Siberian shamans. And they tripped together. The flying could be symbolic of the hallucinogenic effects of the mushrooms. As Donald Pfister, Harvard Biology professor explained to NPR in 2010, “ "This idea [is] that reindeer go berserk because they're eating Amanita muscaria. Reindeers flying — are they flying, or are your senses telling you they're flying because you're hallucinating?" Pfister delivers an annual holiday lecture in which he talks about this connection between shroom and Santa. For an extra fun fact about reindeer, Caribou are the only deer in which both females and males grow antlers. So, Santa’s reindeer may very well all be female.
Many or most will argue that the story of Mr. Claus and the tradition of the night before Christmas as we know it originated from the mind of aristocratic New Yorker, Clement Clarke Moore,as detailed in his 1823 poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” But where is the fun in that? Christmas is indeed a magical time. And maybe just maybe, Santa is the personification of the magic of the holy mushroom. True to the colors and the ability to bring wonder to human beings the world over. So when you experience Christmas this year remember the magic of the Amanita Muscaria.