Bursenos *sigh*

Wow. I've heard some conspiracy theories before, but this puppy takes the cake. To his credit, the author definitely has a unique theory and looked high and low to search for evidence to back it up, but too often i feel as if Bursenos is reaching. I agree that there is likely more to the Santa Claus figure than is readily apparent, but the character and historical figures origins are in Russia, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition of Christianity, and while i don't doubt the importance of magical mushrooms to shamanism and even early modern medicine, i feel the santa claus legend has more in common with early marxism than with amanita muscaria.

The area of the text that really taxed my ability to suspend my disbelief was the section where the author did his best to link thier names with the effect of the fungus in question. While i felt that the basic link with the raindeer and thier use/ingestion of the mushroom was interesting (as well as being a strong piece of evidence in the authors favor), however these detail felt like desprite reaching, as did the bit about the beserkers/vikings/and bears. While the German people did readily embrace the Santa Claus story and would likely leave their linguistic mark on the tale, the vikings had nothing even remotely approaching St. Nick in their mythology.

Another area of interest which i took issue with was the way he reached to fit a bear into the argument so he could use lycothopy as evidence to back his argument. While this was important to shamanism, this phenominon had very little (squeezing down the chimney...maybe?) to do with the Santa legend. I applaud his attempt to explain the symettry between the appearance of the devil, the mushroom and santa, but there is a chronological failing here. The devils appearance as we know it was not "finalized" until the late 18th century some 60 years before "the night before Chirstmas" was even written. Both examples are far too recent to be used as a "code" representing the muscaria mushroom, especially since the authors main arguement is that this fugus and it's effects have been forgotten by the western world since the the 5th century when Pope Gregory banned pagan ritual.