Spicing Up the Holidays

My inner child has been whining, “WHY?” for the last several days. WHY do we associate many warming spices with the holiday (Yule/Christmas) season? I’ve just spent a couple of hours browsing the Internet for answers and haven’t found a danged one. Oh, yes, there are plenty of sites giving generic spice history but nothing specifically associated with the holiday season.

So, I’m going to go out on a limb and do some conjecturing.

First, most of our holiday traditions come from the northern hemi...