For more than a decade, “Adventures with Santa” has appeared in magazines around the world: a fictional series blending holiday magic with cannabis culture, compassion, and plant wisdom. Each year, Santa drops in on real figures from the cannabis community for a little medicine, a little conversation, and a reminder of why this plant matters. This season, he pays a visit to High Times Publisher Josh Kesselman.
Santa and his faithful crew headed west from Albuquerque, skimming the high desert under a cold, starlit sky, crossing into Arizona and toward the rugged foothills outside Phoenix, the ranch home of Josh Kesselman.
“Let’s go, Rudolph! Now! Dasher, Dancer and Prancer! On Vixen, Comet and Cupid! Dash away, Donner and Blixen and all! Over the hills to Josh’s ranch we go!” Santa chuckled to himself as he paraphrased the prose that made them famous.
It was a crisp Christmas Eve over the Arizona desert, where nighttime temperatures can dip sharply once the sun goes down. A cool winter hush settled over the foothills north of Phoenix as Santa descended toward the ranch.
“To a place where kindness for creatures is strong, we go!” Santa called out, patting Rudolph’s neck.
Not a Saint, but a doer of good deeds nonetheless, Kesselman, often called the “Willy Wonka of Weed,” had been in the cannabis industry since the early ’90s, opening smoke shop Knuckleheads in Gainesville, Florida. Raided in 1996, the ordeal made Josh part of an elite club within the cannabis community.
The only thing in the shop the feds didn’t take were the rolling papers. And in 2005, when the smoke finally cleared from the traumatic event, he would launch the now-iconic, clean vegan rolling paper brand, RAW.
Santa hovered over the ranch, touching down in a clearing near the barn. …
Read More
Author: Sharon Letts / High Times
