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Creating Your Own Tea Ritual
From mint to rooibos to matcha, take the time to pour into yourself
I grew up on an island that remained a British colony until 1962, so of course tea was part of the ingrained routine of life. To break the fast in the morning? Tea. To calm your spirit after school or the workday? Tea. During the day as needed for a pick-me-up? You guessed it, tea! My mother is a born and raised tea fanatic, and she passed that energy along to me. There is no time of day that she won’t advise me to drink an “NCOT” as she calls it — a nice cup of tea.
“I don’t need a special time, whenever I just feel for it, I guess. Because it calms me,” she explains. I was raised to embrace tea in the same way, as a general panacea for frazzled nerves or a bad day. It wasn’t until I got older that I learned of the global impact of tea and developed a fascination with global tea rituals and traditions and began to appreciate that in my family, we had created our own.
Tea is one of the world’s most communal drinks, often enjoyed in formal and informal gatherings around the world. If you Google tea traditions or look up the search term on YouTube, you will immediately find a great deal of information about centuries-old cultural practices around the brewing of sencha or matcha tea in Japan as formal welcome ceremonies for special guests. Oolong tea rituals centered around special occasions, like the traditional Chinese tea ceremony as part of a wedding. There are also longstanding tea rituals in African countries. Mint green tea served in a practice called ataya or attaya is a way of life and a community practice, particularly in West African countries like Senegal, Ghana, and The Gambia. This method of tea brewing is celebrated as a signal for community, conversation, and company. This tradition requires a long brewing time and a pouring method that helps to create the traditionally foamy texture of the minty, sweet, gunpowder green tea brew.
Masala chai is mainstream worldwide but originated with Indian and Pakistani tea traditions, where warm spices like ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, and peppercorns are mixed and heated with milk. Here in America, hot tea may not be as popular as it is around the world, but the classic Southern practice of steeping sun tea in a sweaty pitcher on a hot…
