  | Christmas Evergreens | |||
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Changing Traditions | ||||
Of all the trees that are in the
wood, the holly bears the crown... It's not just the Christmas Tree which is brought into our homes from outside over the Christmas festival. Other plants are associated with the season, of which probably the most famous are holly, ivy and mistletoe. Like the tree, a number of stories have grown up around these customs, some of which are described below.
Many of these customs are assumed to be 'pagan'. This is a real can of worms. Since the dubious works of comparative mythology of the nineteenth and early twentieth century (most notoriously the Golden Bough and its successors) and the growth of the twentieth century neo-pagan movements, there have been numerous attempts to connect evergreens with pre-Christian roots. The main problem with all of this is that it relies on something 'feeling' pagan rather than any evidence for a connection. Even had there been a pre-Christian origin to evergreen customs, to extend any kind of pre-Christian meaning into the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period as so many do, seems to me pretty disrespectful and patronising of the people of those times. We suspect that accusations of paganism around popular customs are closely linked to a Puritanical (or nineteenth-century neo-Calvinist) disapproval of fun. Which is why most of the fun bits of Christmas to this day are often referred to as the 'pagan' bits of the festival, rather than the po-faced, sober Christian parts. But just as Christians don't have the monopoly on being over-serious, pagans aren't the only people able to have fun. This is one of the issues discussed on our Christian and Pagan? page. For much of the content on this page we are indebted to Richard Mabey's wonderful Flora Britannica. On the holly and the ivy in particular, we wholeheartedly recommend the excellent resources presented by the people who put together the Hymns and Carols of Christmas website. These
are the big three evergreens that are brought into houses for the
Christmas season. Around them is a complicated pattern of folk beliefs,
superstitions and long-established custom. In a way, the explanation is
really quite simple: unlike deciduous plants, evergreens are fairly
obvious symbols of life or immortality. This is as true for any
original
pre-Christian meanings (see mistletoe) as it is for their continued
use. Despite this universality, several specific stories have grown up
around these decorations. There is nothing intrinsically
mystical or mysterious about gathering bright
red berries and shiny leaves to decorate a house in the
darkest days of winter Mabey's point is a good one. The sight of holly is an uncomplicated positive aesthetic experience at Christmas time. It also has economic associations with winter, due to its apparently widespread use as a good winter feed for livestock. But despite this, there are some more mysterious elements to its use.
This symbolism is particularly evident in the carol The Holly and the Ivy as it's come down to us. While the first verse and the famous refrain of deer, sun & church organ seem to be relatively modern additions (according to Parrott & Keyte, cited here), the remaining verses have the genuine ring of late medieval or early modern allegory. In addition to its probably ancient use as midwinter greenery, holly seems to have become associated with two superstitious areas: luck and witches. Cutting down a holly tree is supposed to be bad luck in many parts of Britain, as is keeping holly in particular in the house after its alloted time, often at Twelfth Night. Sprigs and boughs by contrast have been seen as lucky and as charms against witches and evil spirits. This may be something holly shares with other prickly plants, as the tradition of planting brambles by graves is supposed to carry a similar meaning. Ivy has a fairly recent festive pedigree as a popular decoration. With a long-standing association with drink, you might expect it to be connected to festivities. It appears to have seized the popular imagination in the eighteenth century in England, both as a melancholy symbol of decrepitude and ruin and a constituent of Christmas garlands. It has also The attractive foliage, dark
green or variegated, means it is well worth reviving as a simple
decoration in the home. Mistletoe is the really mysterious one. Anyone who's seen it growing on a bare tree in the middle of Winter can understand it acquiring an uncanny reputation. Its long-standing traditional role was as a charm or medicine. The only real early evidence for its now customary use at Christmas is as part of New Year celebrations on the Welsh-English border. But it does not have the same medieval references as holly enjoys.
The idea that the church disapproved strongly of the use of mistletoe as seasonal decoration has also been challenged in recent years, given the reasonably widespread evidence for mistletoe-buying in church accounts from England. For more on this, see the relevant entry in Simpson & Roud's Oxford Dictionary of Folklore. The Scandinavian story of Balder the Beautiful, a god slain by a mistletoe spear, enjoyed a great revival in Victorian Britain, the source of so many of our fondest seasonal customs. This is a kind of 'just so' tale in part, describing why mistletoe grows in the tops of trees and it was one of my favourite stories, growing up and reading Enid Blyton's Christmas Book. | ||||
One
fairly obvious association between holly
and Christmas is the resemblance of the prickly leaves to Christ's
crown of thorns and the red colour of the berries, suggesting blood.
Like medieval art, religious festivals are partly about themselves and
partly about the broader narrative of belief. To remember Jesus' death
at his birth is a fairly standard occurrence.
benefited from its assocation with
holly, by means of the famous carol and all its variants. Several of these speak of a 'contest' between holly and ivy, as the 
It
is widely believed to have been pre-eminent in pre-Christian religious
rites, although the evidence for this is just a very brief reference to
Gaulish Druids in Pliny. The craze for Druidism in the eighteenth
century and the subsequent romantic and nationalistic 're-claiming' of
Pagan Europe set the connection firmly in the popular imagination. Its
use at Christmas time pre-dates this time by at least a century, but
the fashion for using mistletoe in kissing boughs really took off in
the eighteenth century - it's a short stop from disapproving of the
sensual customs of kissing under a bough to deeming it non-Christian
and pagan. 
So we can blame Christian moralists for helping
the
connection with Druidism along a bit! Although why pagan Druids should
have a monopoly on kissing is beyond me..