Misinformed On Mistletoe

[Note: this article was terribly long when I first published it, so I've condensed it.]

If you just google mistletoe without digging through old history books, you would seriously get the impression the entire history of mistletoe can be summed up as nothing else but, "The only reason we know about mistletoe is because Druids loved it and cut it at the winter solstice, and that's how it came to Christmas."

That is not even remotely the story about mistletoe.

Gonna be frank with you. I don't care much at all for the mistletoe tradition. My family did not pass the tradition to me. I am not particularly in need of an excuse to kiss fair maidens. I don't find cheap, plastic mistletoe to be all that attractive. I much prefer nutcrackers.

Then why write about it? Two reasons. First, I had meant to write something else but was side-quested by all the information on mistletoe. It was quite the adventure. There is more to it than I imagined. Second, because I was told something and now I want to know if it was true. Let me give you but two examples of the claims I grew up hearing.

"The traditional Christmas tree, the Yule log, the holly wreaths, and kissing under the mistletoe - all were borrowed from heathenism and used in a pagan religious orgy dedicated to the sun-god."
-Rod Meredith, "The Ten Commandments", 1972, p. 41

"Now where did we get this mistletoe custom? Among the ancient pagans the mistletoe was used at this festival of the winter solstice because it was considered sacred to the sun, because of its supposed miraculous healing power. The pagan custom of kissing under the mistletoe was an early step in the night of revelry and drunken debauchery - celebrating the death of the "old sun" and the birth of the new at the winter solstice."
-Herbert Armstrong, "The Plain Truth About Christmas", 1970, p. 15

Not very flattering! But are they correct? Let's find the answer to that.

Today, we are going to see the distant history of mistletoe, where it came from, and its surprising uses. Also, I will give some speculation on how it came to us. I present this post to you, dear reader, because mistletoe turns out to be a fantastic way to show how the things everybody knows to be true aren't always true.

Discussions about mistletoe tend to come around to Druids. So, might as well start there.

DRUIDS GALORE

You've heard about how the Druids held mistletoe in a particularly high regard. That's what the Romans said, anyway. That's what most everyone says. You can't have a good discussion about Druids without Pliny the Elder. He says quite a bit about mistletoe and Druids in his work "Natural History". For example:

"Upon this occasion we must not omit to mention the admiration that is lavished upon this plant by the Gauls. The druids - for that is the name they give to their magicians - held nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree that bears it, supposing always that tree to be the oak."
-Pliny, "Natural History", book 16, chapter 95.

The Druids wrote nothing down, so we have to rely on the good word of others for details about them. So far as we know, Pliny wrote accurately. Pliny keeps proving himself in other quotes. I vote we trust him.

But Pliny did not say it was only the Druids who used mistletoe.

He spends four chapters on mistletoe and its particular details, but only one paragraph concerns the Celts. The way he makes it sound, most cultures in the west were incredibly well familiar with it and its uses.

It gets stranger. Pliny did not say all Druids used mistletoe.

Pliny only mentions the Druids in France (Gaul) loved it. It says nothing about Celts in general, who lived from Britain to Turkey. We have to be careful when we say things like "the Celts" or "the Druids" because those are more concepts than definite groups. Celts were divided up into tribes who fought each other all the time. It is merely an assumption that all Druids everywhere had the same practices. Why would we assume that? The Galatians, to whom Paul wrote his famous epistle, were every bit as Celt as the French. Were their cultures identical? No. As a matter of blatant fact, historians have known for some time that Celtic cultures and practices most definitely were not the same. And they differed over relatively small geographic areas.

Let's explore claims of pagan origin even further by looking at the solstice.

THE SOLSTICE

I get tired of careless claims on the internet like, "Why do Christians use mistletoe at Christmas? That's simple. Because Druids collected it at the solstice." No. That isn't true. This shows people have not thought this through.

But not all claims are careless internet commentors. Alison Wier, author of "A Tudor Christmas" (a book I own and appreciate quite a bit) says the same:

"The ancient Romans observed that the Druids of the British Isles used mistletoe in winter solstice ceremonies and in healing."
-Alison Wier, "A Tudor Christmas", 2018, p. 20

She continues on to talk about Pliny. Let's go back to quote directly from Pliny about Druids:

"The mistletoe, however, is but rarely found upon the oak; and when found, is gathered with rites replete with religious awe. This is done more particularly on the fifth day of the moon, the day which is the beginning of their months and years, as also of their time cycles, which, with them, are only thirty years. This day they select because the moon, though not yet in the middle of her course, has already considerable power and influence..."
-Pliny, "Natural History", book 16, chapter 95.

So, it was not the Druids in Britain but the druids in Gaul (France), and it was not the winter solstice but their new year. Was their new year at the winter solstice? Best data says no.

In our recent post "Samhain Was Not On October 31", we looked at the only known Druidic calendar. If you want more details, you may read that article.

At Halloween, people claim everything comes from the Druids, and Samhain was the Druidic new year. At Christmas, people claim everything comes from the Druids, and the winter solstice was the Druidic new year. Well, it can't be both. (And Ronald Hutton advocates for the mid-winter.)

There is no evidence at all the Druids had solstice or equinox celebrations. This is a misunderstanding arising from two thousand years of various traditions getting jumbled and confused together. They were a lunar society. Their calendar shows it and Pliny attests to it. 

"But Stonehenge measured the sun!" Not Druidic. All of the henge artifacts and burial mounds predate the Druids, in some cases by over a thousand years. (Yes. They're that old!) The same goes for other henges in other areas, such as Goseck in Germany. They far predate the civilizations we recognize and the times we are interested in here.

I want to point out that all of these things I have said about the Druids and the solstice also pertain to the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse. All had lunar calendars. None have known, verified solstice celebrations. Even Yule was not a solstice celebration until it was reinvented in the 20th century. We can be fairly sure they had mid-winter festivals, but not solstice festivals specifically.

Then there are the ubiquitous claims like, "Such and such originated in pagan celebrations of light at the solstice." Most everything is explained in this way. These very generic claims about "mistletoe comes from widespread solstice traditions" are not fact-based, make definite claims of speculation like "they could have taken from the Celts", confuses midwinter festivals with solstice festivals, draw conclusions based on broad generalizations like "greenery was used in many cultures", and are generally built on conditions as we see them today being anachronistically projected backwards in time.

See how this works? One person connects two dots that don't connect, and someone else repeats it, and it gets repeated over and over until you simply cannot get a straight answer anymore.

Here's a straight answer -
Mistletoe goes with the Druid new year, but their new year does not go with the solstice. Do you understand what that means? We have two options: Druids used mistletoe in October/November, or in mid-January, and neither one lends itself well to our records or traditions.
In short, people are just as wrong about Druids and Christmas as they are about Druids and Halloween.

NORSE

Upon this occasion we must not omit to mention the Norse.

If you do a simple google search, you will find careless claims, like, "Why do Christians use mistletoe at Christmas? That's simple. Because of Yule." And just like with the Druids, that is not exactly based on reality.

Understand the Norse (and the Germans) were not the Celts/Druids. Completely different culture.
In one of the Prose Eddas, Gylfaginning, is the death of Baldur, a son of Odin. In most but not all versions of the story of the death of Baldur, he was killed by an arrow made of mistletoe. This is why mistletoe had a foreboding, deathly reputation among the medieval Norse.

Does that sound like Christmas to you? It sure doesn't to me.

The timing of Baldur's death is also important.
Baldur is associated with mid-summer to late fall. His death would initiate Ragnarök, which is associated with winter. Therefore, the Scandinavian pagan traditions of death by mistletoe had nothing to do with Christmastime (nor Yule).

You will not get this from a mere google search. I can't tell you how many times I've read about Frigg, the goddess of love, wanting people to kiss under the mistletoe. Did you notice none of those claims come with sources cited, besides, "legends say...". That is because they are all baseless. You will get many tales of Norse using mistletoe at Yule, and mentions of love and happiness. But that is not how things were in the past. All of those pretty paintings of Vikings sitting outside in the snow having a mead under some mistletoe are beautiful, but rather inaccurate.

If you look around Scandinavian cultures today, the meaning of mistletoe is not deathly at all. Quite the opposite. It represents love and happiness.
How?
Not wanting to take weeks to research the evolution of Scandinavian cultures over the past 1,000 years, I just asked ChatGPT. I asked, "If mistletoe was used as a kenning for death in the Prose Edda, how did it become a symbol of happiness in modern Scandinavian culture?" It explained how their culture developed, then it said:

"From England, mistletoe's role as a Christmas decoration spread to other parts of Europe, including Germany and Scandinavia, during the 18th and 19th centuries, as part of the cultural exchanges spurred by Victorian England’s global influence."

Isn't that odd, now? It wasn't the Norse who brought mistletoe to the Christians, because to them it was deadly and ominous, but the Christians who changed mistletoe from death to life for the Norse. And it wasn't ancient but quite recent. From this change come the legends of Frigg wanting people to kiss under the mistletoe. They are not ancient legends.

Once again, just as with other studies we have done here at ABD, we see people taking things the way they are today and projecting that backwards in time, anachronistically, and reinventing the past.

Pagan ritual is only one part of the story. Mistletoe's pragmatic uses were far more popular and widespread.

MEDICINE AND BOTANY

Where we have a centuries-long gap in information about pagan uses, we have multiple sources for mistletoe's practical uses. Mistletoe is mentioned in older works for its medicinal value or else for sheer botanical interest.

Going back to Pliny, he says:

"The hyphear [mistletoe that grows on a larch] is the best for fattening cattle with; it begins, however, by purging off all defects, after which it fattens all such animals as have been able to withstand the purging. It is generally said, however, that those animals which have any radical malady in the intestines cannot withstand its drastic effects. This method of treatment is generally adopted in the summer for a period of forty days."
-Pliny, "Natural History", book 16, chapter 93.

The way Pliny talks about mistletoe, it is clear there was an incredible amount of knowledge already existing, which he was just gathering up. He finished writing "Natural History" in 77 AD. More than 2,000 years ago, they had it figured out to the point where they knew which mistletoe was better when it grew on which trees. Farmers used it on their cattle. Healers used it on people. This amazes me!
Other ancient authors wrote about mistletoe. Some of the more notable include Virgil in his "The Georgics" book 1, Galen in his "On The Power of Simple Drugs", and Ovid.

That knowledge remained. Several more recent authors have written about it, too.

In 1485, Jacob Meydenbach of Mainz, Germany wrote the "Gart der Gesundheit" (Garden of Good Health), which was greatly expanded and translated to Latin in 1491 under the title "Hortus Sanitatis" (Garden of Health). In it, he provides a drawn illustration of mistletoe, and describes its medicinal uses, including epilepsies, digestive issues, hemorrhaging, and as a general tonic. This is the oldest reference I could find on the practical uses of mistletoe, outside of Pliny. Clearly, it draws from widely-known uses and perhaps even earlier written works.
It is particularly remarkable for being the first known work where art was used to depict the natural world outside of a religious context. The first illustrated encyclopedia. It was widely popular and translated into several different languages in the following years, including English.

One other notable author is William Coles. In 1657, William Coles wrote "The Art of Sampling". He mentions various health benefits of mistletoe for man and beast, and quotes Sir Francis Bacon. Plus, he mentions the berries. I tried to find when mistletoe berries out. Apparently, it depends on the tree it grows on, but mistletoe produces berries from October to January, and those berries can linger until May. Yeah. That puts it in the range of Christmas.
Coles also wrote this: 

"I think the thing itself is better known, than the manner of its growing, because it is carried many miles to set up in homes about Christmas time, when it is adorned with a glistening berry."
(p. 41.)

And there you have the first mention of mistletoe at Christmas time that I was able to locate. He is not the first to mention mistletoe, but he is the first to mention its use at Christmas time. Centuries later than one would expect from a pagan coopt.

It is important to note that Coles did not say it was used for Christmas, only that it was collected at Christmas time. It berries out at that time, so naturally it would be collected at that time. But being collected at that time is different than being collected for that time. It is reasonable to conclude it was being hung to dry and sold at market.

And did you know mistletoe and its derivatives is used in modern medicine? It's true! It is used in both cancer and immuno-therapies, and is being considered for other uses.

Since the majority of the info we have is about medicine, why do so many people claim mistletoe was almost exclusively used by Druids for rituals? Bad info. Most people giggle because you kiss under mistletoe, and they really don't care about the stuff otherwise. It's the ones who obsess over "once pagan, always pagan" who seem to be confused about it. They see paganism in everything, and only want what affirms them. There is so much more to it than this.

FERTILITY

Kissing under the mistletoe is its most popular use. How many times have you heard mistletoe was an aphrodisiac? More than once, I'd wager. Recall how Rod Meredith and Herbert Armstrong blamed mistletoe on pagan rituals. If you read this blog at all, you will not be one bit surprised when I tell you everything they said there is false.

We do have a reference from Pliny that puts together Druids, mistletoe, and fertility. How dirty-minded were they? Let's take a peek.

"It is the belief with them that the mistletoe, taken in drink, will impart fecundity to all animals that are barren, and that it is an antidote for all poisons."
-Pliny, "Natural History", book 16, chapter 95.

They did believe it was a fertility drug ...for cattle.
But only if the animals could survive the process. Doesn't sound so debauched to me.

Other than that, the only other mention Pliny makes of kissing in that entire book is that Nero would kiss his favorite tree. That does sound a little debauched. Not at all in regards to anything we're talking about here, though.

Regarding kissing, there is no known record of kissing under mistletoe until the later-1700s. That means it developed in the late-1600s or early-1700s at the earliest. The first place mistletoe is found in a romantic context is in a song from a musical comedy called "Two to One", which was published in 1784.

When at Christmas in the hall
The men and maids are hopping
Cry, "What good luck has sent ye?"
And kiss beneath the mistletoe.

From that point on, it is found more and more often in a romantic context. And we see it spreading to other European cultures. What might have caused it? Look at the timing. It was immediately after the Puritan era.

It wasn't just a kiss under the mistletoe, per se, it was a young man got one free kiss from the maiden of his choice per berry on the mistletoe sprig. When the berries ran out, he got no more freebies.

No, not in heathen orgies. Not in drunken debauchery. Not an unbroken continuation of ancient fertility rites. That is entirely fabricated nonsense. "God's own truth," they called that. But false. Somewhat of a letdown there. We were promised things much more juicy than cow medicine and 18th century prudishness.

In short, the Druids are not the source of the kissing tradition. Nor was it some other unnamed group of ancient heathens caught up in unbridled passion. It was just the relatively modern Europeans.

The explanation for the kissing having been located, we have yet to see why mistletoe was a Christmas decoration in the first place.

MISTLETOE FOR CHRISTMAS

So, why do we have mistletoe at Christmas? Unfortunately, no one living knows for certain. The earliest records I have been able to find seem to say it was more of a medicinal thing, and never a part of corporate church celebration, except by accident, until the late 1600s. This tends to lead away from a pagan coopt. But the strongest evidence we have points to our Christmas traditions rising out of the English Puritan suppression of Catholic symbolism.

Going back to "Stations of the Sun", I will summarize what Hutton says in chapters 2 and 3.
The Scottish and then the English heavily suppressed Christmas from the mid-1500s to the mid-1600s. The popular choice in greenery changed as Protestants rejected many symbols from Catholicism, including holly and ivy. Much to their chagrin, suppressing the religious inflated the secular use of greenery. Rather than removing greenery altogether, it was only removed from churches, not the public square. Without the religious symbolism behind it, the greenery options expanded. Anything green at that time was used. Hence mistletoe at Christmas. This is the time period when we start seeing mistletoe used specifically as a Christmas decoration. Mistletoe was hung in defiance of Parliament's banning of Christmas in Great Britain during the 1650s. Mistletoe's role as a Christmas decoration spread into other parts of Europe, including Germany and Scandinavia, during the 18th and 19th centuries, as part of the cultural exchanges spurred by Victorian England’s global influence.

That sounds quite reasonable, but it could all be undone if there were some earlier reference. I searched long and wide for earlier references than Coles, but came up empty. Finally, I asked ChatGPT if it could find an earlier reference to mistletoe used at Christmastime, but it was unable.

The most reasonable conclusion is - there is nothing older to find, because it wasn't being used as a Christmas tradition.

This gap of mistletoe as a Christmas decoration is across the board. We have no mention of it in any culture - as a Christmas time tradition, specifically - until it appears in England in the late-1600s.
Add to this the fact that we see it first in England and then spreading out into other areas in the 18th and 19th centuries. Mistletoe as we know it today appears in all areas in the same time period.

What else can we say? Mistletoe either was not being used at Christmas at all until the late 1600s, or it was so rural and so unimportant that no one mentioned it. All of the evidence we have, or the lack thereof, lends support to Ronald Hutton's explanation. Nothing so far lends credence to the claim it came directly to Christmas from ancient paganism, especially the Druids. Pagan coopt is the weakest of all explanations by far. 

Perhaps that 1500-year gap is as it should be. Perhaps we have not lost information after all. Perhaps it is illusory, built from an insistence on some ancient pagan origin. It is quite reasonable to conclude we are searching for evidence of a pagan origin that never really happened. If mistletoe as a Christmas tradition really did start after the Reformation, then a 1,500-year gap should be there.

What the world needs is the discovery of some new literary source that fills in the missing pieces ...if there are missing pieces to begin with. In the meantime, all one can do is speculate based on the solid information we have in hand rather than insisting on theories we have no evidence for.

CONCLUSION

"The only reason we know about mistletoe is because Druids loved it and cut it at the winter solstice, and that's how it came to Christmas." False.
"Well, then it was because of the Norse and Yule." No.
"Well, then it was because of some unnamed culture's winter solstice rituals." Incorrect.

Do you recall those two quotes from the start of this post, the ones from Rod Meredith and Herbert Armstrong? Read them again quickly and see how they are just nonsensical. Once again, we see people passing off false history as "God's truth". That should come as absolutely no surprise to the readers here. The thing is, there is a lot of bad info out there. That's why we needed this post.
Mistletoe did turn out to be a fantastic way to show how the things everybody knows to be true aren't always true.

The history of mistletoe is a long, complex, and winding road. We may never get all the answers we seek. But we did get a few.
Today, we learned:

• Mistletoe was used medicinally and ritually throughout most of the western world since forever ago. It was also used to trap birds. Everyone seemed to use it.
• Pliny said mistletoe was used as an animal medicine especially in summer. Mistletoe is not just a winter thing.
• The first mention of mistletoe being collected at Christmas time was from 1657.
• Mistletoe was not popular in churches at all. English churches preferred holly and ivy.
• If mistletoe was not used in churches, that speaks against it being coopted from pagans by the church.
• We do not know exactly when mistletoe became associated with Christmas, but it appears to be during the Reformation, in the late-1600s.
• Mistletoe does not start appearing as a Christmas tradition in other nations outside the British Isles until the 18th and 19th centuries.
• Kissing under mistletoe did not start until the 1700s. The first mention was from 1784.
• Mistletoe was not an aphrodisiac ...except for animals.
• If the mistletoe tradition involved a continuation of a pagan practice, the Druids aren't the best candidate.
• Druids in France loved mistletoe, only when it grew on oak trees. We don't know much about Druids in other areas.
• French Druids most important use of mistletoe was at their new year, which was likely in fall, not at the winter solstice. And they were moon-based, not solar-based. Some say Druids had no solstice celebrations at all. Claims of Druids and solstice are likely to be false. Mistletoe was not particularly a winter tradition for them.
• Norse mistletoe was foreboding and deathly, and associated with Autumn. It changed after they imported the Christmas mistletoe tradition from the English.
• The Anglo-Saxons had no known mistletoe traditions.
• And there is quite a bit of misinformation floating around, started after the Reformation.

There sure is a lot more to mistletoe than I thought there was! Life is a funny thing. I sat down to write a very small and simple post about Christmas greenery, so light and easy to read with pictures from Pompeii, when all of this information about mistletoe starts pouring out of the internet at me. Oh, not easily, mind you. I had to dig, dig, dig for it. Next thing you know, I'm reading many esoteric histories, chasing down recursive series of sources cited one after the other, and even talking to software. At one point, I had five books open at the same time. I have nine tabs open in my other browser right now. But there is some good information out there if you have the determination to get it.

In the end, I think the simplest explanation for mistletoe is the best. People decorate all year around. Flowers in the spring and summer, produce in the fall, greenery in the winter. What truly seems to matter about mistletoe is that it is not only a useful plant, but is green and has pretty berries when it needs to. Everything boils down to that.

 

************

It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

************