Did 'Shrooms Send Santa And His Reindeer Flying?

[RyanHale]

I don't know where to put this one so I'll just post it here.

Simple science, some history and some logic may explain some of the holiday decorations and lore. Did psychedelic mushrooms and the Santa story gradually weave itself into popular culture over the last 200 years? Well, it looks like it ... or it is at least something to think about.

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/24/132260025 ... eer-flying

Click on the Listen to the Story link at the top of the page for the audio version.

[Tim Bonney]

[Dave Roberts]

Maybe Santa has mastered time travel or has found wormholes from one house to the next.

[Hal Eaton]

I didn't take time to read all the comments (118 of 'em) in the NPR story, but I wondered if anybody suggested that, in additon to Lewis Carrol, Sinclair Lewis, and Clement Moore, St. John the Divine was on the same kind of high when writing his treatise on the Revelaton?

[Haruo]

Rudolph is a definite Christ figure. When he said "Get thee behind me, Santa" it took only a little dyslexia on the part of Matthew (the evangelist) to …

Just dyslexia, no fungi needed.

[RyanHale]

[Haruo]

[Tim Bonney]

[Mrs Haruo]

I left "Left Behind" behind. Get me behind me, Santa indeed. And I have a very merry Chris Moose. He is now my Styling Moose for the rest of the year. A wooden reindeer basket that makes a great place to keep my hair dryer, hair brushes and love beads. Groovy. Far out.

[David Flick]

[Mrs Haruo]

(cue music) "He's got spurs that jingle jangle jingle........" Like the column in Reader's Digest: "Laughter is the Best Medicine", Being married to Haruo is gooood thereapy!

[Hal Eaton]

Haruo's mention of Hugh Schonfield's "The Passover Plot" reminds me that while I was in 'Nam in 1976-77 with the 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade, our general challenged me to read the account of how Jesus manipulated the whole process of his crucifixion to make it come about as proof of his Messiahship. Upon reading the book, I drew the conclusion that Schonfield offered proof of his theory as if he was a true Biblical inerrantist, accepting justification for his theories by believing that every Biblical account of a conversation was the exact presentation of what was said, by whom and when it was said under what circumstances, thus proving the efficacy of his conclusions.

Amid a lengthy list of his publications, Schonfield also wrote "Those Incredible Christians," written with the same premise in mind that the early apostles followed the duplicate conspiratorial aspects of the earlier work. I still have a copy of the second book (someplace).

Schonfield's accounts are further proof of the observation that "Every historian is a revisionist historian."