Mistletoe
An evergreen that grows on other trees and bears white berries in winter, hung up at Christmas for kissing under. Pliny wrote that the Druids held nothing more sacred, and in Norse myth a twig of mistletoe killed the god Balder.
Meaning
English custom, as John Brand described it, hung the mistletoe in the kitchen “in great state, with its white berries”; any girl who stood under it could be kissed by a young man, who plucked a berry for each kiss. Clement Miles (1912) adds that when the berries were gone, the privilege ended, and that kissing under the mistletoe seemed to him a distinctively English custom. It was kept out of churches. Brand thought it never entered one except by mistake, because of its place in the rites of the Druids; an old sexton at Teddington told him that mistletoe once put up in the church was taken down at once on the clergyman’s orders. Miles knew one exception, York Minster, where some was laid on the altar.
Origin and history
Pliny the Elder wrote in his Natural History that the Druids of Gaul held nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree it grows on, provided the tree was an oak. Mistletoe is rare on oaks, and when found it was gathered with ceremony: a priest in a white robe climbed the tree, cut it with a golden sickle and let it fall into a white cloak, and two white bulls were then sacrificed. Translations differ on the day; Bostock and Riley’s English has the fifth day of the moon, James Frazer’s the sixth. Miles reports Dr MacCulloch’s suggestion that Pliny’s account may be incomplete.
In the Norse myth Frazer retells, Frigg made everything swear not to harm Balder, except a plant growing east of Valhalla, “a plant called mistletoe; it seemed to me too young to swear.” Loki pulled it and gave it to the blind god Hother, who threw it, and Balder fell dead. In England, Brand quotes Coles in 1656: mistletoe was “carryed many miles to set up in houses about Christmas time”. John Gay’s poem Trivia, also quoted by Brand, still put “sacred MISLETOE” among the greens strewn in churches.
Why do people kiss under the mistletoe?
No one has found out. Brand recorded the custom with its berry-plucking but gave no origin, and Miles wrote that it is hard to say where it came from: perhaps from a supposed link between love and the fertility of the sacred bough, perhaps from the licence allowed at folk festivals. Both are his guesses; neither writer cites an early source for the kiss itself.
Read next
- Next in Christmas symbolsPoinsettiaA Mexican shrub whose leafy bracts turn red in December, called flor de Nochebuena in Mexico and cuetlaxóchitl in Nahuatl. Franciscan friars at Taxco used it to dress nativity scenes, and it reached the United States in the 1820s, where it took the name of Joel Poinsett.
- The same shape in Adinkra symbolsBese SakaBese Saka, a bunch of kola nuts, is the adinkra symbol of affluence, abundance and unity.
See also
Holly, Nativity scene, Star of Bethlehem, Advent wreath, Christmas tree, Yule log.
Sources
- Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, book 16, chapter 95, Translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley, 1855, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, book 16, chapter 95
- The Golden Bough, abridged edition (James George Frazer, 1922), Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, abridged edition (New York: Macmillan, 1922), chapter LXIII, section 6, The Hallowe'en Fires, Internet Archive, chapter LXI, The Myth of Balder; chapter LXV, Balder and the Mistletoe
- Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 1 (John Brand, ed. Henry Ellis, 1853), John Brand, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, arranged and revised by Sir Henry Ellis, vol. 1 (London: Bohn, 1853), Internet Archive (University of Toronto copy), Evergreen-decking at Christmas, pp. 522–524
- Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan (Clement A. Miles, 1912), Clement A. Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1912); Project Gutenberg e-text 19098, Internet Archive (Project Gutenberg text), chapter XI, Christmas decorations
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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