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.