Santa Claus’ origins are very hazy, some say it was Coca-Cola’s marketing push, old Greek legend, and some Norse folktales among countless other stories. The truth is that the modern day Santa has become an amalgamation of many myths and legends, we are diving into the one theory we have some sort of expertise about. Magic.

Medium news interviewed an anthropology professor “Santa is a modern counterpart of a shaman, who consumed mind-altering plants and fungi to commune with the spirit world. 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,” according to John Rush, an anthropologist, and instructor at Sierra College.

So with a little brain work we can figure out how feasible this is. We’ve got amanita historically fruiting all the way into December especially in the Nordic regions. After drying and preparing in pine tree like ornaments, Christmas or midwinter solstice or Yule would be right around the corner for these peoples. If you’ve ever found a large flush of amanita, you know a couple of those patches and you could literally dose the entire village as a Christmas present.

There are also stories of keeping reindeer and feeding them the holy mushroom, reindeer are able to filter out the unwanted toxins and leave you with urine that will let you meet god. While using this specific mushrooms, the hallucinations are very odd, a flying reindeer wouldn’t be out of the question. Maybe it was more metaphorical in the sense of escapism, “flying away”. So with it being extremely easy to make possible, a red and white man coming into your house, drying the “ornaments” on trees, flying reindeer, and boiling the fruits in your fireplace chimney to prepare, and leaving cookies/food for your shaman… I personally don’t think it is far fetched to believe that the Nordic lore is heavily infused with mushroom culture. We have the records of it happening for hundreds if not a couple thousands years prehistory.
So I hold true in my heart-
Santa took mad trips with his reindeer sled team and got the whole city twisted in the process

Have a very happy holidays all!

https://medium.com/@mustaphahitani/santa-was-a-magic-mushroom-d3065b05e76f