It’s hard to believe that this is the first of November! Where has the year gone? As the Fall season began, some of you were getting the Christmas decorating started. You know who you are! Many just can’t help themselves for all the joy that wells up in them over the holiday seasons that are fast upon us.
Along with the changes in décor also comes the smells of the season. What would Fall and Winter – specifically, Thanksgiving and Christmas – be like without the smells of cinnamon? It is one of my favorites, especially when you walk into a home, and you are greeted with this spicy aroma. Somehow, the smells of cinnamon comfort me, making me feel warm and cozy inside. Add a crackling fire to the picture and I just couldn’t be happier!
Today is National Cinnamon Day, started in 2019 by McCormick. According to the McCormick websites, “Cinnamon is harvested from the bark at the base of cinnamon trees, where the outer bark is scraped off before harvesting the inner bark. If cut down, the trees regrow. The bark can be tested for its aroma and flavor and, once harvest, is shipped to facilities to be cleaned and dried. During cleaning, the inner bark naturally curls up into quills during the drying process. Quills are used for cinnamon sticks or ground for powder.
“The 1600s, it turns out, were banner years for cinnamon. That’s when cinnamon toast—nothing more than cinnamon and sugar on hot buttered bread—was first recorded as a childhood favorite… It’s also when recipes for cinnamon sticks (or at least a form of them made with gum Arabic, rosewater, cinnamon and sugar) were prescribed as “good for colds, or children in church.”1 So long as they didn’t come wrapped in that crinkly, noisy wrapper, wouldn’t it be funny to look around the congregation and to see a number of people with a cinnamon stick hanging out their mouth? It would look like everyone was chewing on their pens!
The top four countries that grow cinnamon are China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka.2 It is also grown in South America and the West Indies. McCormick’s cinnamon comes from their U.S. based plant in Indonesia.3
When was cinnamon discovered? That’s hard to answer because it was mentioned all the
way back in Bible days with the first mention being in Exodus 30:22-25. “Moreover the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, (23) Take thou also unto thee principal spices, of pure myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half so much, even two hundred and fifty shekels, and of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty shekels, (24) And of cassia five hundred shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary, and of oil olive an hin: (25) And thou shalt make it an oil of holy ointment, an ointment compound after the art of the apothecary: it shall be an holy anointing oil.”
This holy anointing oil was applied to the vessels within the tabernacle. When people came to worship, they would instantly catch this aroma floating in the air. Did it come across to them as a homey essence? They have come to worship and be in the Lord’s presence. It a place where they should want to stay. This should be a place filled with a sense of home.
How ever you enjoy cinnamon, whether it be sprinkled on your latte, snicker doodles, or cinnamon toast, let the fragrance remind you of the comfortableness of home and the warmth of worshipping in the presence of the Lord.
Paul put it this way in 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17, “Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, (17) Comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work.”
1https://www.mccormick.com/articles/mccormick/about-cinnamon
2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon
3https://www.mccormick.com/articles/mccormick/about-cinnamon
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