Adventures In Wortcunning: Spicing Up The Holidays

Adding some spice to the season? Pull together some ginger, cinnamon, a little clove, some nutmeg, cardamom and allspice…sounds a bit like pumpkin pie recipe, doesn’t it? You will find some variant of this combination in many seasonal classics. In fact this one flavor probably means “Yuletide” more than any other taste of the holidays.

three different holiday teas in their respective boxes — Various holiday teas in the author’s collection / Photograph by the author

Mulling Spices

This mixture of spice is commonly called either chai or mulling spice. Add this to soft cider, and warm the concoction in a crock-pot (set to low) for a non-alcoholic winter warming hot drink. Test the cider and add water to taste before you serve it, hot mulled cider is much sweeter than the cold variety. Float a slice or two of orange, some crab apples, and cinnamon sticks in the pot for seasonal zest.

I love this stuff, the flavor and the season both. I’m one of those folks who never really quit believing in Santa Claus, even as I wrap the kids’ gifts, signing off as the big guy himself and perpetuating the myth. It doesn’t matter, this time of year it’s gingerbread and tinsel, laughing all the way. You will find the mulling flavors in this children’s favorite. It is the spice that makes this digestive biscuit a viable building material for tabletop houses, replete with sugar icing for glue, Necco roof tiles and candy cane fencing. Everything else in that list relies upon copious amounts of sugar to keep the cottage safe from all but mice and tiny hands throughout the season. With gingerbread, it’s all about the spice.

Mulled wine uses this same base of spices to create a hot beverage that will have your guests coming back to refill time and again. The alcohol evaporates out of the heated wine rather quickly, but people think the kick is still in the Yule punch, so the effect of breaking social ice at a gathering is well served with such a beverage.

Spices

In the off season, I find myself thrown back into the holidays with a cup of chai tea. Although the blend of spices will vary in each kitchen producing the chai, there seems to be a list of favorites with a few slight variations. Checking the ingredients listed on the boxes in my tea cabinet, I found the following:

Holiday Chai

Rooibos
Cassia
Ginger
Cardamom
Black pepper

Chaucer’s Mulling Spices

Cinnamon
Orange Peel
Clove

Stash Chai Spice

Black tea
Cinnamon
Ginger root
Allspice
Clove
Cardamom

Okay, so that was an embarrassing variety, mostly because I should be using them up faster! These spices will lose pungency and potency over time. I know that many of these flavors came to Northern Europe via the trade routes followed by Marco Polo in the 13th Century and subsequently many, many others.

So many others in fact, they got sick of making the over-land journey, got in a boat and started looking all over the globe for another route. They found the Americas instead. Oh well, you win a few, you lose a few…

Chai

Chai just means tea in China. In the United States, the drink we commonly call Chai, is an import from East India officially known as Masala Chai. It has no fixed recipe but varies by region and household. Masala Chai is made with mulling spices, and can include also Almond, Rose, Fennel, Star Anise and Licorice root in the mix and is usually made with a base of black or green tea.

Let’s look at the magickal properties of chai and mulling spices, according to Cunningham, in alphabetical order:

Allspice: used to promote healing, attracts money and luck.
Almond: for money, prosperity, and wisdom.
Cardamom: is used in potions for love and lust.
Cinnamon: used for spirituality, success, healing, power, psychic powers, lust, protection, and love.
Clove: for spells of protection, exorcism, love, and money
Fennel: for protection, healing and purification.
Ginger: used to bring Love, Money, Success, and Power.
Licorice Root: for Lust, Love and Fidelity.
Nutmeg: for Luck, Money, Health, and fidelity.
Orange (peel): used for divination, and to attract Love, Luck, and money.
Rose: for Love, psychic powers, healing, Love divination, Luck, and protection.
Star Anise: Psychic powers, and Luck.

This list, after reading so many complimentary properties, must be a conjure that is many centuries old, for a very potent magickal holiday potion. Mix it up until you find the right proportions to make your own holiday magick. You will find the spices are flavorful enough to be used sparingly in foods like mincemeat and pumpkin pies. Go easy with clove and cinnamon especially as they can be quite powerful and sometimes overwhelm other flavors. Orange peel, ginger, nutmeg, are powerful allies we call to aid us in this spell-work for the New Year.