Leaf through a catalogue or stroll down an aisle in your local retail giant, and you'll have no trouble whatsoever identifying the 2025 holiday season's Theme-of-the-Year.

It's the Year of the Magic Mushroom.

Redcaps. Fly Agarics. Amanita Muscaria.

Ornaments. Plush toys. Hats.

(Plush toys? Seriously?)

Hel-lo?

Um, folks: they're hallucinogenic.

Um, folks: they're potentially toxic.

Yes, they're eye-catching.

Yes, they're colorful.

Yes, they're considered a symbol of good luck throughout the German-speaking world. (Make of that what you will.)

Yes, reindeer eat them.

Yes, shamans eat them.

Yes, their hallucinogenic alkaloids concentrate in the urine of the user.

Ho, ho, ho.

Agarics: drug-of-choice of Old World shamans. They grow here in the New World, too.

Though I've heard rumors of redcap use in the medicine lodges of the Anishinabe, the fact is that the Americas are home to lots and lots of kinder, gentler hallucinogens, thank you very much.

No need for urine-drinking, either.

(I once heard an interviewee deny that he was a shaman on the grounds that he'd never taken amanita muscaria. No more have I, but then, I don't claim to be a shaman either, unless “warlock” is how you say “shaman” in Witch.)

The natural world, and informed, hands-on knowledge thereof, continues to recede ever farther in our cultural rear-view mirror.

Still, those white-flecked red mushroom ornaments that you see hanging from, and clipped to, the branches of my Yule tree, bear their fair share of memory of the Old Days and the Old Ways, as well they ought.

As to exactly what they mean to the woman at Target buying that adorable little polka-dotted fly agaric cap for her babe-in-arms, well...you'll just have to ask her.