The Season of Cinnamon

“We’ll fill our lives with cinnamon now” - The Decemberists

Often it is said that there is a special “something in the air” during the holidays.  Sometimes, if you’re lucky, that something is snow.  Sometimes it’s the scent of peppermint or balsam fir or chestnuts roasting on an open fire.  Occasionally, it’s an unexplained aura of brotherhood and cheer.  More often, it’s haste, stress, curse words, or in the case of a California Walmart this Black Friday, pepper spray.  Sometimes it’s cinnamon.

Today, I had a cup of chai.  There are few pleasures in life greater than a warm mug of chai.  Before I’ve even taken a single frothy sip, its delicate aromas - mixing sweet and spicy, foreign and familiar - have already transported me to a heavenly place...brought me home, so to speak.  The distinct chai spices carry a bite that awakens me to the world and stimulates my senses while at the same time its smooth milk tempers the bite, softens the edges, and envelopes me in a blanket of peace.  No matter how often I take a sip of chai, it never ceases to be special.  I love every piece - the cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves - but perhaps the most universal and accessible of the many flavors in my cup is cinnamon.  

Harvested from the inner layer of bark of a handful of trees from the genus Cinnamomum, cinnamon is literally a prehistoric spice.  It was imported to Egypt as early as 2000 B.C. but was surely being used in South and East Asia long before then.  In Sri Lanka, which now produces 90% of the world’s supply, cinnamon is known as kurundu, and in nearby Indonesia, it is called kayu manis, meaning “sweet wood”.  I love that name for it because that’s what cinnamon is: it takes what is normal, plain, functional - and makes it something more.  It is unassuming, brown, and whether rightly so or not, fairly ubiquitous.  And ubiquitously loved.

Who doesn’t like cinnamon?  Unlike ginger or cilantro, cinnamon is not a spice with a cult following.  I don’t usually ask around to see if the dinner guests mind my adding it to the butternut squash.  Like anything, it can be overdone, but that would take a pretty heavy-handed chef.  Cinnamon goes well with both sweet foods - apples, yams, chocolate - and savory or tart foods - squash, curries, wine, cranberries.  It evokes a sense of comfort, “making this cold harbor now home,” as The Decemberists sing.  And for many, cinnamon has seasonal associations.  In the TV show Community’s satire of stop-motion Christmas specials, the characters describe their imaginary holiday story land as having an “atmosphere that is seven percent cinnamon.”  At a time when the world is frosting over, hours of light are short, and warm-blooded creatures retreat to the indoors and underground, we turn to cinnamon for heat and a hint of joy and rebirth.

Beyond its comforting properties, however, cinnamon remains a spice.  It both symbolizes and yields a certain power.  In the Hebrew Bible, Moses was instructed by the Lord to add cinnamon to the sacred oil with which he anointed the ark of the covenant, the Tent of Meeting, and all the accessories of the holy altar.  God commanded him: “Do not make any other oil using the same formula. It is sacred, and you are to consider it sacred” (Exodus 30:32).  This sacred spice has been a symbol of wealth and power for much of its history.  Its demand alone was enough to spur the capture and colonization of Sri Lanka by first the Portuguese and then the Dutch in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  As with coffee, chocolate, diamonds and mahogany, the cultivation of cinnamon has cost the poor a great deal of blood and sweat and its profits have not always been theirs to share.

The potency of cinnamon has traditionally extended to romance as well.  In the biblical Song of Songs, the lover says of his beloved, “You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain...with choice fruits...calamus and cinnamon...and all the finest spices.”  She responds, “Awake, north wind, and come, south wind! Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread abroad.  Let my lover come into his garden and taste its choice fruits” (Song of Songs 4:14-16).  In Proverbs, too, cinnamon is combined with myrrh and aloes to perfume the bed of the temptress.  There is something about this spice that is irresistible - something that awakens what is dormant within us and, to put it bluntly, turns us on.

This magical “sweet wood” can also heal.  Not only is cinnamon oil used as a perfume, an insecticide, and an antibiotic, but a recent study by the Indian Journal of Medical Research found that it was the most effective of 69 plants tested as an antiviral against HIV-1 and HIV-2.  As someone who has spent several years working closely with those affected by HIV, I find this deeply heartening.  As if that weren’t enough, apparently cinnamon also helps combat cancer.  It has led to documented anti-melanoma activity in cell cultures and test mice - progress against the cancer that killed my aunt - and who knew that cinnamon “activates the Nrf2-dependent antioxidant response in human epithelial colon cells,” thereby helping to prevent colon cancer like that which robbed me of my favorite Granny.  The same favorite Granny was starting to go batty and had some memory loss...she was never diagnosed, but if her family members are at risk for Alzheimers, a 2011 study found that CEppt, an extract of cinnamon bark, is a successful inhibitor of that disease in mice.

So why this obsession with the so-called sacred spice? Why “fill our lives with cinnamon now”?  Because there is a draft under the door.  It’s the first Sunday of Advent, and I’ve begun to deck the halls.  All but the most stubborn leaves have fallen, my bike is put away, and I’m about to flip to the calendar’s last page.  In the face of winter’s chill, we seek warmth.  We gather close, rub our hands, bake with abandon, make soup.  An atmosphere of cinnamon is a balm for a broken, frozen, half-dead world.  It is the comfort we need today all tied up with the hope we hold out for tomorrow.  It is both passion and patience.  In almost all of us, it triggers something, no matter what that something is.  So throw a little in your cocoa and meet me by the fireside for a song: ‘tis the season of cinnamon.

It's Complicated

Devon P likes Dance.

Devon P is in a relationship with Dance.

July 5 at 9:45pm
Devon P added 15 new photos to the album Once Upon a Time...

July 5 at 10:15pm
Devon P was tagged in 13 of her own photos.

September 3 at 10:11pm
Devon P Donned ballet slippers for the first time in far too long and lived to tell the tale.  I'm gonna feel it tomorrow.

September 4 at 11:20am
Devon P Can't walk, sit, bend over, turn my head, or laugh.  Haven't felt this good in ages!

October 18 at 5:32pm
Devon P Off to see Hubbard Street Dance with Katherine and Erik!  So psyched.

December 13 at 9:54pm
Devon P > Cari M Come take class with me!  I swear that at this studio every mirror is a skinny mirror!

January 1 at 11:12pm
Devon P New year, new city, new job.

January 8 at 4:04pm
Devon P Never thought I'd say this, but I think I have a new love: yoga!

January 8 at 4:17pm
Devon P is now friends with Back Bay Yoga Studio.

February 2 at 7:49pm
Devon P > Hartley P My PT is awesome!  She works full time and dances in a company on the side...She also gave me a list of studios to try in Boston and Cambridge.

March 10 at 8:57pm
Devon P First time in a long time anyone has asked me to do 32 fouettes...

April 29 at 10:33pm
Devon P > Hartley P I <3 Cosmin!  He's the Romanian Serg-a-Lerg!

May 17 at 7:40pm
Devon P > Hartley P Haha just chatted with the pianist at ballet about Tatiana Legat!  Apparently they are BFF and she used to be a ballet mistress at Boston Ballet.  Left for Mother Russia though and he's super bummed.

June 1 at 9:02pm
Devon P likes Claudia T's album La Vie, Les Amis, La Danse.

June 13 at 10:05pm
Devon P Seriously??! The sub for dance class just asked if I danced professionally.  I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

August 28 at 9:14pm
Devon P Ugh.  How is it possible that someone who danced professionally for so many years cannot count to 8??!

August 31 at 11:07pm
Devon P added 21 new photos to the album Boston Ballet at the Hatch Shell.

September 12 at 8:25pm
Devon P > Hartley P Cosmin is gone.  New teacher is tall, skinny and gorgeous.  Felt the need to demonstrate her 180+ degree penchee multiple times.  Gag me.

September 12 at 9:22pm
Devon P Still feeling the effects of my three month foray into running a year and a half ago.  So no, I'll take a pass on that 8 mile race with 2000 feet of elevation change in a ridiculously humid tropical climate.

September 15 at 6:27pm
Devon P went from being “in a relationship” to “it’s complicated.”

October 18 at 3:04pm
Devon P Why am I paying $15 an hour to pretend to be a dancer again?  I believe there are other, cheaper forms of self-torture.

October 22 at 12:01am
Devon P likes Hartley P's link Senior Capstone Performance - www.youtube.com.

October 22 at 12:09am
Devon P likes Hartley P's link Hartley P Dance Reel - www.youtube.com.

October 22 at 12:14am
Devon P commented on Hartley P's link Hartley P Dance Reel - www.youtube.com: “Love you sis! Take NYC by storm!”

October 30 12:32pm
Devon P “So to all the secret writers, late-night painters, would-be singers, lapsed and scared artists of every stripe, dig out your paintbrush, or your flute, or your dancing shoes.  Pull out your camera or your computer or your pottery wheel.  Today, tonight, after the kids are in bed or when your homework is done, or instead of one more video game or magazine, create something, anything.  Pick up a needle and thread and stitch together something particular and honest and beautiful, because we need it.  I need it. Thank you, and keep going.” - Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines

November 12 at 2:55pm
Devon P Can't wait to hit up Boston Ballet's Romeo and Juliet with Cara L!

November 12 at 11:11pm
Devon P “We do not judge great art. It judges us.” - Dr. Caroline Gordon

December 8 at 3:56pm
Devon P Modern class in the citay with Hartley P!

December 30 at 12:18pm
Devon P Conspiring with Hartley P to start a world-changing dance company...while stuffing our faces with cheesecake and chocolate!

January 2 at 9:58am
Devon P Packing the pointe shoes.  You never know when you'll need some pink satin-covered pain-induced nostalgia, right?

January 25 at 9:31pm
Devon P Finally found an effective incentive with which to bribe myself to do my PT exercises: withholding other forms of exercise!

February 29 at 12:47am
Devon P Leaping my way into Leap Day barefoot on the beach under Caribbean stars...

March 1 at 3:23pm
Devon P “The only way we can brush against the hem of the Lord, or hope to be part of the creative process, is to have the courage, the faith, to abandon control.” - Madeleine L'Engle

[...]

Devon P went from “it’s complicated” to being “engaged”.

[...]

Devon P is married to Dance.

[...]

It’s still complicated.