By Shannon Hicks

Most of us have grown up celebrating Christmas with everything that comes with this grand winter holiday, from the decorated pine tree towering over gaily-wrapped presents to the family dinners, perhaps a Christmas Eve service at church, and certainly the good will that seems to permeate the air. Winter scenes like this always seem to be framed with freshly-fallen snow, and perhaps a nearby pond with ice skaters of all ages.

The Christmas holiday also comes with a number of natural decorations. We have our wreaths of all shapes and ornamentation, with themes or without, with ribbons, bows, pinecones and what-have-you.

Also around in prevalence at this time of the year is the ever-romantic mistletoe. Mistletoe is traditionally hung in doorways and from ceilings, and anyone caught standing under a sprig of the green-leafed, white-berried plant can expect to receive a Christmas kiss from a member of the opposite sex.

The mistletoe hung in the castle hall

The holly branch shone

on the old oak wall.

 — “The Mistletoe Bough”

Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797-1839)

Mistletoe is an interesting little plant. There are actually several species of mistletoe, but the best-known and most common is Phoradendron leucarpum, or North American mistletoe. The plant is found from New Jersey south to Florida, and as far west as the Great Plains. It thrives whenever winter temperatures rarely fall below zero degrees Fahrenheit.

North American mistletoe is an evergreen plant with leathery leaves not much larger than a thumbprint. It grows into three- or four-foot clumps high on the branches of oak, hackberry, elm, pecan, black gum, maple, tupelo and sycamore trees.

The plant grows on the upper branches of the trees on which it lives. After the trees lose their leaves in the fall, the mistletoe is easy to spot.

North American mistletoe has broader leaves than its European counterpart, called Viscum album (another genus altogether).

  Early observers thought that mistletoe seeds could not germinate until they had passed through the digestive system of birds.

“The word translates roughly to ‘the little dung twig,’” Mary Durant has written.

The thing about mistletoe is, it is the only highly-evolved flowering plant that is parasitic. This makes mistletoe botanically unique.

While mistletoe has been found growing in a number of trees — the plant inhabits almost any deciduous tree, preferring those with soft bark — it most commonly grows on old apple trees.

Once the sticky berries of the mistletoe come into contact with the bark of a tree, generally through the deposits of birds, after a few days the seed sends forth a thread-like root, flattened at the extremity like the proboscis of a fly.

Once the root pierces through the bark of its now-host tree, it sets itself firmly into the growing wood. From this point it has the power of selecting and appropriating to its own use such juices as are fitted for its sustenance.

The wood of mistletoe has been found to contain twice as much potash and five times as much phosphoric acid as the wood of its foster tree. Mistletoe is a true parasite, for at no time does it derive nourishment from the soil, or even from decayed bark like some fungi do. All of its nourishment is obtained from its host.

Mistletoe is always produced by seed. It cannot be cultivated in the earth like other plants; hence ancient peoples once considered it to be an excrescence of a tree.

By rubbing the berries on the smooth bark of the underside of the branches of a tree until they adhere, or by inserting them into clefts made for such a purpose, it is possible to grow mistletoe successfully if desired.

  Mistletoe contains mucilage, sugar, a fixed oil, resin, an odorous principle, some tannin and various salts. The active part of the plant is the resin, Viscin, which by fermentation becomes a yellowish, sticky, resinous mass, which can be used with some success as a birdlime.

 

Country people use the berries to cure severe stitches in the side. The birdlime of the berries is also employed by as an application to ulcers and sores.

—both excerpts from

the book A Modern Herbal,

by Mrs M. Grieve

(1931; Harcourt, Brace & Company)

 How has mistletoe come to be the romantic plant of this season? There are, like many other stories and symbols in our world, a number of explanations.

Shakespeare called it “the baleful mistletoe,” an allusion to the Scandinavian legend that Baldr, the god of Peace, was slain with an arrow or dart that had been made using the wood of mistletoe.

Baldr’s life was later restored and in Nordic myth, it is said the tears shed by Frigga, the mother of Baldr, turned into the pearly white berries of the mistletoe branch. In her joy of her son’s life having been returned, Frigga kissed everyone who passed beneath the tree over which she loomed and on which the original mistletoe plant grew.

Additionally, the plant was placed in the future under the care of Frigga, and was never again to be an instrument of evil unless it touched the earth. The story ends with a decree that who should ever stand under the humble mistletoe, no harm should befall them, only a kiss, a token of love.

The Druids held that the Mistletoe protected its possessor from all evil, and that the oaks on which it was seen growing were to be respected because of the wonderful cures which the priests were able to effect with it.

They sent round their attendant youth with branches of the Mistletoe to announce the entrance of the new year. It is probable that the custom of including it in the decoration of our homes at Christmas, giving it a special place of honour, is a survival of this old custom.

—from The Magician’s

Dictionary,

by E.E. Rehmus

(2nd ed, 1996)

Every Christmas, my parents would pull the boxes of holiday ornaments and decorations down from the attic. Down came the fake Christmas tree that went into the den, the four stockings for the mantel in the living room, the lights that went around the living room window, and the hundreds of ornaments for the tree. And in one of the boxes was the mistletoe bell.

It was primarily a white plastic ornament, maybe six or seven inches tall, shaped into a bell. It had a red ribbon tied into a loop, and it was always hung in the doorway that ran from the kitchen into the living room. The bell’s “ringer” was a ball of mistletoe.

One of my parents would find the mistletoe bell, pluck it out of a box and unwrap it from the papers that had protected it from dust for another year. Whoever found it would hold it above his or her head, and the other would go right over to the bell holder and give them a kiss. My parents were the ones who taught my sister and I that standing under mistletoe would bring a special Christmas kiss.

Mom and Dad were always doing sweet things like that. They held hands in public constantly. They made a point of greeting each other when they arrived home after work. They gardened together.

As my sister and I grew up and we were in our early teens, certainly old enough to be left home alone for a few hours, my parents got into the habit of waking up on Sunday mornings just to go to McDonald’s for a cup of coffee together. Year-round, they acted like young teenagers in love. It must have been all those kisses under the mistletoe that kept them so happy.

I’ll always associate mistletoe with my parents. By their example, not just their words, they taught me about the magic of mistletoe.