2022: Year of the Water Tiger

The Lunar New Year represents the start of the traditional Chinese calendar year where each month is a moon cycle. The start of the Lunar Year is calculated at the second New Moon after the Winter Solstice, this year the festival begins on February 1st and the celebrations will continue through until the close on February 15th with the Festival of Lanterns, the children’s favorite parade where they carry little lanterns through the streets.

The Lunar New Year is a family holiday with an emphasis on food and family gatherings. The Lunar New Year menu is full of auspicious and delicious dishes: special long noodles for long life, rice balls to bring prosperity, special lucky fish dishes, wontons and dumplings. Usually, the festivities at Lunar New Year account for the largest human seasonal migrations in the world as families get together, but pandemic restrictions have vastly reduced current travel and made visiting family that much more difficult.

Following the Chinese tradition, each year is dedicated to one of the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac, and also to one of the five elements; water, earth, fire, wood and metal. Both the zodiac and the elements cycle through a repeating pattern: the zodiac on a twelve step cycle and the elements on a five year rotation.

2022 is the Year of the Water Tiger, the first time in 60 years that this combination has manifested. The Tiger symbolizes nobility, boldness and creativity, innovation and energy while Water years are free-flowing and spontaneous which will be a welcome change after the last two Metal years (2020-2021)

Each year all the signs of the Chinese zodiac come under the influence of the zodiacal year, this year is governed by the Water Tiger, and we are all encouraged to take our cues from the self assured big cat. Some signs are more favored in a Tiger Year, some are almost ignored, but the real message for all signs of the zodiac is to take note of the qualities of Water and the TIger and see how we can all tap into that energetic vibration.

Tigers are highly instinctual animals and the experts are urging us all to tune into our intuitions and instincts this year and be ready to embrace the changes that a free flowing Water year will bring. Individuals born in 1938, ‘50, ‘62, ‘74, ‘86, ‘98, 2010 and 2022 were born in the Tiger year. They are considered loyal, vivacious, impulsive and optimistic- geared for action!

Cannabis-infused Gingerbread Cookies for the Holidaze!

Let’s face it! The holidays can be a bit stressful. Winter is normally the time that Nature is asking us to turn intuitively inward and yet Culture is asking us to be out and about, socializing and shopping. It can be a depleting time of year and sometimes a bit joyless, so put some pep in your step and take the edge off with some cannabis-tinged gingerbread cookies!

This recipe will instruct using Synergy Wellness tincture # 119 Sativa Blend in Sesame oil.

Edibles are a tricky thing and you have to do some calculus to make sure you are getting a happy amount in each cookie. You also must remember that these are delicious so you don’t want to eat the whole batch! So dosing these is up to your own measurements. I personally like my edibles to be in the 5-7 mg THC range. So, if I were to make these cookies, I would probably aim for about half that amount in each cookie so I could eat two because who just wants to eat one cookie? Not I!

You can also choose to make these with a CBD-dominant tincture so that their psychotropic effects are not detectable but you will still be getting all the benefits that CBD can bring (anti-anxiety, anti-inflammatory). For CBD tincture, dosage is not as important.

This recipe yields 36 cookies and I will be calculating this recipe with a dose of roughly 3 mg THC Per cookie. Please adjust accordingly. And it’s always recommended, no matter how delicious, that you start with one cookie and wait an hour to see how it affects you (unless you are well aware of your tolerances and limits).

Feel free to decorate by frosting/icing to your heart’s delight (Your decorations might be more fanciful if you eat a cookie first before icing the rest of the batch!).

From our Synergy Wellness family to yours, we wish you a very healthy, happy, and high holiday season!

Start to finish: 90 minutes

Yield: 36 cookies

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

• 3/4 tsp baking soda

• 1/4 tsp salt

• 1 Tbsp ginger, ground

• 1 3/4 tsp cinnamon, ground

• 1⁄4 tsp cloves, ground

• 6 Tbsp butter

• @ 6-7 droppers-full of #119 tincture (bear in mind, a ‘dropperful’ is usually about ¾ of the pipette)

• 3⁄4 cup brown sugar

• 2 eggs, large

• 1/2 cup molasses

• 2 tsp vanilla

• 1 tsp lemon zest (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 ºF.

2. Prepare baking sheets by lining with parchment paper.

3. In a small bowl, whisk together dry ingredients.

4. In a large mixing bowl beat butter and sugar until smooth.

5. Add molasses, vanilla, and #119 tincture and lemon zest and continue to mix.

6. Gradually stir in dry ingredients until blended and smooth.

7. Let stand at room temperature for at least 1 hour.

8. Sprinkle flour over dough and rolling pin. Roll dough to 1/4-inch thick. Use additional flour to avoid sticking.

9. Cut out cookies with desired cutter and space cookies approx. 1 inch apart on cookie sheet.

10. Sprinkle sugar on top of cookies (or, once baked and cooled, decorate as you wish.)

11. Bake for 7-10 minutes.

Unraveling the Origin of Santa Claus

Drawing by Thomas Nast, 1881

Magic mushrooms may have played a central role

For the last 100 years or so, we have all come to recognize and love that universal symbol of Christmas, Santa Claus. His origins have been traced to St. Nicholas, who lived around 300 AD and was regarded as the patron saint of children. The modern version of “Sinter Klaas” (as the Dutch referred to him) evolved from several sources: the publication of the poem “The Night Before Christmas,” in which the jolly figure was described in detail with flying reindeer and descents down the chimney added to Santa lore; cartoons drawn in the 1870s by Thomas Nast, a political cartoonist who practically invented the editorial cartoon, and marketing efforts by the Coca-Cola company, who commissioned illustrations in the 1930s that laid the final groundwork for the cherubic fellow we know today (and conveniently for Coca-Cola, reinforced their red-and-white branding).

Coca-Cola ad from the 1930s

But in recent years, another origin story has been making the rounds that suggests that Santa’s beginnings lay with shamanic figures from the Nordic countries who would bestow the gift of magic mushrooms on the local populations. Shamans (the term originates in Russia) were the medicine men of their time, and harbored much knowledge concerning the healing and transformative powers of plants. The mushroom in question, Amanita Muscaria, features a bright red top dotted with white. They were commonly found underneath the local conifers, and eventually this gave birth to the idea of “goodies” under the Christmas tree. It’s not a coincidence that Santa’s outfit is red and white.

“Why do people bring pine trees into their houses at the winter solstice, placing brightly colored (red-and-white) packages under their boughs, as gifts to show their love for each other?

It is because, underneath the pine bough is the exact location where one would find this ‘Most Sacred’ substance, the Amanita muscaria, in the wild.”

– James Arthur, author of “Mushrooms and Mankind”

Around the Winter Solstice (December 21) it was traditional for the shamans to deliver gifts of dried mushrooms by entering houses through openings in the roof, as the door to the house was likely to have snow piled up against it. This became the chimney through which Santa descended every Christmas Eve. And in another fun parallel, the mushrooms were dried by arranging them on an evergreen tree. These were the first “Christmas trees.”

Vintage Scandinavian Christmas cards from the 1930s

The local reindeer were also fond of the mushroom (some biologists theorize that they relieved the boredom of a long winter) and could be observed in animated states after consuming them. Shamans considered reindeer to be “spirit animals,” and since an oft-reported effect from ingesting mushrooms is a sensation of flying, it’s not much of a stretch to conceive of “flying reindeer.”

Weave all these strands together, and you have something remarkably like the story we’ve all heard this time of year since we were small children. It’s a story of love for your fellow humans, the desire to make them happy with gifts, and the power of the natural world to make magic happen.

• • •