The fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) mushroom is so iconic ... Fly agarics are commonly depicted in old Christmas cards, and the mushrooms themselves were often used as ornaments.

Yet a type of mushroom called Amanita muscaria — commonly known as fly agaric, or fly amanita ... the inspiration for Santa Claus and other Christmas traditions, because Siberian shamans ...

That's just one of the symbolic connections between the Amanita muscaria mushroom and the iconography of Christmas ... Siberian tribesmen who ingested fly agaric may have hallucinated that ...