April 20, or 4/20, is the day to celebrate the most un-Hallmark of holidays, whose oft-debated origin story is most often attributed to a group of Northern California high school kids who, in 1971, caught word — or maybe wind — of a secret cannabis grow in the woods near their school. They gathered at 4:20 p.m. every day to search for the mythical grow, which they never found. But 4:20 eventually morphed into the toking hour, a catch-all term for weed, and a code that it was time to smoke.
These days, especially with legalized cannabis, from special sales and promotions to festivals and Friendsgiving gatherings of all sorts, there are lots of ways to celebrate 4/20. One of the most creative I’ve heard about is Zen Cannabis’s Guinness Book of World Records–level quest to create “The Big Zen,” which, weighing in at 20 pounds using 100 pounds of flower and 4.2 million milligrams of THC, makes it the largest, most potent, dominantly dosed, and most expensive cannabis chocolate bar ever made.
To carry the numerical significance of the holiday even farther, the nine-foot-by-four-foot bar retails for $42,000. A potent endeavor on every possible level, at the Zen “Cannafactory,” the Big Zen operation will take 360 hours with 12 people whipping the mega-bar up six hours a day.