UNDER THE MISTLETOE

Everyone is familiar with sprigs of mistletoe hanging ubiquitously from lintels at office parties, and other holiday parties attended by people we may not be particularly interested in kissing, or by whom we may not wish to be kissed (there are those of us who NEVER got to kiss some whom we would fervently have loved to lipsmack, long and hard, too shy, too afraid of consequences, too wrongly gendered). Who could know what a long and intricate history this plant has, how far back into the winter celebrations it reaches?

The picture above is mistletoe in its natural habitat, growing in clumps and balls in the bare winter woods. When I was in college in Texas, on a beautiful day such as we are having here today, we would go out into the woods to look for these clumps, climb and clamber into the trees, cut down big bunches and bring it back to decorate dorms, take or send home to our families for decorations. It is sold in roadside stands all over Texas at this time of year, and I even encountered a website where they’ll ship it to you from Texas at insane prices.

It’s hard to get a handle on how to approach the history of this plant (Viscum Albun, or Phoradendron) and its association with the winter revels. It is associated with both Celtic and Teutonic rituals of solstice, as well as Mithraic religion, which migrated from Persia into Rome and then into the areas conquered by Rome. It grows as a pseudoparasite on other trees, remains alive when its host appears dead, and comes into fruition just around mid to late December. Mithras was one of the many sun gods of antiquity, and it is of course the sun that is celebrated at this time. The mistletoe is the bough of the title of The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer’s great work on early religions. Its berries appear golden or yellowish as they ripen. The plant played an important part in Druidic ritual, as it was believed to grow upon the sacred oak, perhaps even to impart life to the tree itself. Pliny describes (it’s referred to in every book and site I explored) a Druidic ceremony of mistletoe gathering with a golden sickle into a white cloth held upon the horns of two white bulls.

Its current name comes two Old English words, the word for "wren," and the word for "excrement," later transformed into the word for "twig." This name was given at a time when its mysterious appearance was attributed to wren shit on the branches. In fact, mistletoe is a favorite food of wrens and many other winter birds. Its name in Celtic speech was, and still is, "all-healer" for the marvelous powers of healing sickness, averting mistfortune, protection from harm, protection of spirits on their journey to the Otherworld, and increase in fertility, that it was believed to have.

It is from the last of these uses that its current mythology is thought to have evolved. In England it was incorporated early on into what is called "a kissing ball" or "kissing bunch" which were originally hung from tree branches in the woods after a fertility rite or ceremony. Later the figures hanging from the kissing bunch (originally male and female figures bound together with colored threads) were Christianized into three small figures representing the Holy Family in a manger scene. A fascinating fact showing the universality of nature beliefs is this: "In Australia to this day the Aboriginal people believe that spirit children live in the mistletoe that grows on certain trees and that these are awaiting birth, a further indication of the connection that must have existed over a huge length of time between mistletoe and fertility." (Matthews, The Sacred Traditions of Christmas, 1998, Quest Books)

So, the deeply-rooted association of mistletoe with fertility has remained with us into contemporary society, where it shows up as an occasion for rowdy office-party behavior, although the participants quite likely have no notion of its history. Again, forego the plastic mistletoe bunches, go out into the winter sunlight and gather the real thing – it grows over much of the United States, even into New England. Make kissing bunches out of strands of ivy, mistletoe and holly, hang whatever figures you wish from them, kiss anyone and everyone you love, think upon the many possible sorts of fertility – all that which waits within us to be born, the possibilities we have yet to explore.