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 have no emotional investment in the stuff. I much prefer nutcrackers. Frankly, I don't think very many people care for mistletoe these days. It has gone the way of Blind Man's Bluff.
Then why write about it? 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, and some lessons I learned in studying this topic. 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.
INDEX
SOLSTICE
NORSE
MEDICINE AND BOTANY
FERTILITY
NOTHING FOR CHRISTMAS
MY SPECULATION
MIND YOUR SOURCES
CONCLUSION
DRUIDS GALORE
You've heard about how the Druids held mistletoe in a particularly high regard. That's what the Romans said, anyway. 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.
We see some details about Druids, sure, but we see a wealth of knowledge about mistletoe - where it grows, its three varieties, its uses, its dangers, the cultures that used it, and etc. Their knowledge of this stuff is astounding. He spends four chapters on mistletoe and its particular details. But only one paragraph concerns the Celts. He says far more about mistletoe than he does about Druids. 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 it was all Druids used mistletoe.
That one paragraph which does talk about the Celts, only mentions the Druids in France (Gaul). 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 were identical? No.
If you were told mistletoe was exclusively a Druid thing, that is just not so. Seems everyone in Pliny's day had it and used it.
But among the Druids, we don't know if it was all Druids or only the French Druids who made such a big fuss over it.
THE SOLSTICE
I get tired of careless claims like, "Why do Christians use mistletoe at Christmas? That's simple. Because Druids collected at the solstice." No. That isn't true. This shows people have not thought this through.
Going back to quote 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 winter solstice that was important to Druids. It was their new year. Was their new year at the winter solstice? Best data says no.
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.
There is no evidence at all the Druids had a solstice or equinox celebrations. They were a lunar society. Their calendar shows it and Pliny attests to it. "On the fifth day of the moon," he said. "Because the moon," he said. The winter solstice makes no sense whatsoever.
I asked ChatGPT about this. (This was my first time using ChatGPT.) It started telling me about solstice traditions and yada yada. This was my next question: "Since Pliny says the Druids in Gaul cut mistletoe at their new year, and the new year was not at the winter solstice, then why do people say Druids used mistletoe at the winter solstice?" (I actually said 'people' because I strangely did not want to offend it by saying 'you'.) Here are some highlights from the response I received:
"You're absolutely right to point out the distinction between the Druidic use of mistletoe and the more commonly associated winter solstice celebrations. This confusion arises largely from the way historical accounts and later traditions have intertwined, leading to a blending of different Celtic customs and seasonal practices. ... the Druids would cut mistletoe from oak trees during a special ceremony that took place at the **beginning of the Celtic new year**, which was celebrated around **November** or **early winter**, not the winter solstice itself (which is around December 21-22). ... In summary, the idea that the Druids used mistletoe at the winter solstice is a later misunderstanding or conflation of different traditions."
It's a misunderstanding arising from two thousand years of various traditions getting jumbled and confused together. I can't see anything wrong in its response.
"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!) Clearly, the Druids had every opportunity to know about the henges, there just isn't any good reason to think they used them. Nor either had anyone else until quite recently.
All of these claims that 'such and such thing is part of Christmas because of Druids and the winter solstice' seem to be made up after the fact by people with only part of the information they needed. They throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Many are the claims, few are the actual proofs. 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 their new year, but their new year does not go with the solstice. Do you understand what that means? If mistletoe was an October/November thing for the Druids, that puts it in the wrong month. That means the mistletoe tradition at Christmas likely did not come from the Druids.
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.
You need to at least know what the Eddas are. The Eddas are compilations of stories and poems written by various authors at various times that tell about Norse mythology. They were compiled together by Snorri Sturlson in the 12th century.
One of the stories in the Eddas is the death of Baldr, a son of Odin. In most but not all versions of the story of the death of Baldr, he was killed by an arrow made of mistletoe. To find all the elements to the story, you will have to dig through several parts of the Prose and the Poetic Eddas. To find direct mention of mistletoe, however, you need to look in the Gylfaginning, which is part of the Prose Edda.
I know it's confusing! Don't worry, I am not going to drag you through all that. I only mention it so you can read about this yourself if you want to. We're big into having sources here.
The important part in the story of Baldr's death is, just like with Shakespeare, mistletoe had a foreboding, deathly reputation among the Norse.
Does that sound like Christmas to you? It sure doesn't to me.
The timing of Baldr's death is also important.
Although the Eddas do not say at what time of year Baldr was killed, we can learn Baldr is associated with mid-summer to late fall. His death would initiate Ragnarök, which is associated with winter. Therefore, the death by mistletoe had nothing to do with Christmastime.
You will not get this from a mere google search. 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 responded:
"The shift from mistletoe being a symbol of death in the context of Baldr's myth to its current status as a symbol of love and happiness is largely the result of cultural and religious changes over the centuries. As Scandinavia and much of Europe transitioned to Christianity, many pagan symbols were reinterpreted to align with Christian values of peace, love, and renewal. Mistletoe's symbolic association with life and eternal love during the holiday season, particularly Christmas, helped to transform it into the joyous symbol we recognize today."
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 once again, we see people taking things the way they are today and projecting that backwards in time, anachronistically, and reinventing the past.
MEDICINE AND BOTANY
The knowledge and use of mistletoe was widespread from the ancient world to the modern. Mistletoe is most often mentioned in older works for its medicinal value or else for sheer botanical interest, not its pagan or decorative use. By no means was it merely a religious curiosity.
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. That knowledge had to already exist. 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.
Now that we've talked about the ancients, lets move forward a few centuries. Several more recent authors have written about it, too. The point here is that people knew about mistletoe.
In roughly 1591, William Shakespeare mentions mistletoe, in "Titus Andronicus", scene 2, act 3. He calls it "baleful" which Webster's defines as deadly or threatening evil. See? Just like the Norse. And likely because of the Norse.
In 1597, John Gerard mentions it in his work "The Herball, or General History of Plants". He doesn't say anything about it in particular, except to describe its general appearance.
In 1623, Sir Francis Bacon mentions it in his work "History of Life and Death". He says, "Mistletoe, which groweth upon the oak, hath a property to preserve and prolong life, and that by a specific virtue against poison and other noxious qualities."
Clearly, Sir Bacon had been reading Pliny.
In 1656, William Coyles in his book "The Art of Sampling". He mention various health benefits of mistletoe for man and beast, and quotes Sir Francis Bacon. Plus, he mentions the berries.
Since Coyle mentioned 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. We will talk more about this later.
In 1720, Sir John Colbatch wrote "A Dissertation Concerning Mistletoe". In it, he discussed its medicinal properties in fighting epilepsies. He mentions an ancient Greek source (Pliny was Roman). He also discussed some superstitious uses such as warding off evil. In 130 years it went from baleful to protective.
Why would I take the time to quote all of this boring stuff? Oh, I have my reasons. To reinforce the idea that mistletoe was well known from very ancient times for its medicinal uses, to show it was still known for its medicinal uses in more recent times, to show it was not just used at Christmas, to show that its uses were not just "paganism", and that it was not just the Druids or the Norse by any stretch.
But I do have one more reason than these. Take one more look at those dates. 1500s to 1700s ... that range of dates will come up again later. In fact, it seems to be a running theme in any my study.
So, 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, but they won't see it.
FERTILITY
Kissing under the mistletoe is perhaps its most popular use. How many times have you heard mistletoe was an aphrodisiac? More than once, I'd wager. Recall how Rod Meredith said, "...kissing under the mistletoe - all were borrowed from heathenism and used in a pagan religious orgy dedicated to the sun-god." And how Armstrong said, "The pagan custom of kissing under the mistletoe was an early step in the night of revelry and drunken debauchery...". 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.
People do kiss under the mistletoe. That cannot be denied. What's up with that?
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. There are those dates again, just like in the last section. The earliest mention of mistletoe at Christmas, several authors writing about its medicinal values, the kissing tradition ... everything mistletoe seems to go back to those same dates.
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.
Later on, we find 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 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.
NOTHING FOR CHRISTMAS
So, why do we have mistletoe at Christmas? Unfortunately, no one living knows. The earliest records I have been able to find seem to say it was more of a rural thing, and never a part of corporate church celebration except by accident.
In 1656, William Coyles wrote "The Art of Sampling". We mentioned him once, back in the "Medicine and Botany" section. In it, he wrote, "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 for Christmas use 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.
I asked ChatGPT if it could find the oldest reference to mistletoe used at Christmastime. It responded with James Frazer's "The Golden Bough". A disturbing and incorrect response. If it was trained on Frazer, we should be careful of its help. I have seen many times since where it gives conflicting information. Use it, but be cautious using it! I let it know about William Coyle, and it appeared genuinely surprised. It responded, "Thank you for sharing that quote! It's indeed an interesting and early reference to mistletoe being used at Christmastime." I asked it to try again, but it was unable to find anything older. This genuinely seems to be the oldest known reference.
Clearly, Coyle was writing in 1656 about something he had experienced. From this we can say mistletoe was used in homes at Christmastime from a prior year ... I just don't know what year. Think about that date, though. It's quite a bit later than one would expect. Centuries later.
In 1856, John Timbs wrote "Things Not Generally Known". On pages 157-161, he discusses mistletoe. He seems to just quote whatever he can find. In the end, Timbs was unable to determine when mistletoe was first associated with Christmas.
In 1876, T. F. Dyer wrote "British Popular Customs". He recognizes the complete lack of information about mistletoe prior to 1600, and even uses Timbs as a source, but Dyer was also unable to determine when mistletoe was first associated with Christmas.
And so it is today.
In 1996, Ronald Hutton wrote "Stations of the Sun". Starting on page 34 discusses how he reviewed the expense accounting from various churches back to the 1400s and prior. Holly and ivy were regularly purchased. There was no mention of mistletoe. Hutton and other sources like T. F. Dyer mention the use of cypress, bay, laurel, broom, rosemary, and rye. None of these things were chosen because they were a continuation of some pagan past. They were chosen because they were green in winter. Hutton was also unable to determine when mistletoe was first associated with Christmas. He says,
"There seems to be no reference to the use of mistletoe in medieval or Tudor English Christmases..."
-Ronald Hutton, "Stations of the Sun", 1996, p.73
I am unaware of any recent discoveries that change things. The only reasonable conclusion is - nobody knows. That's why I titled this section "Nothing for Christmas" - there isn't any information out there that answers our questions. There is only some 1500-year gap.
What else can we say? Mistletoe either was not being used at Christmas at all, or it was so unimportant that no one mentioned it. Nothing so far lends credence to the claim it came directly to Christmas from ancient paganism, especially the Druids.
If someone tells you they know how mistletoe became a Christmas tradition, they are mistaken. No one does. What the world needs is the discovery of some new literary source that fills in the missing pieces.
MY SPECULATION ON MISTLETOE AT CHRISTMAS
I am going to offer some speculation based on what I've read for when and why mistletoe found a place as a Christmas tradition. I want to stress this is pure speculation. No one knows for sure.
If at any time this section starts to get overly confusing, just remember this next paragraph.
Mistletoe has been used medicinally by farmers since goodness knows when. It has also been used in pagan rites and rituals in most cultures in Europe. Because its medicinal uses were mostly in farming, it seems reasonable the average Mr. and Mrs. Rural Farmer knew of mistletoe the whole time. Except, it was used year-round. What about a year-round thing would lend itself to Christmas specifically? The answer, I suspect, is that Coyle's casual mention of berries was not some mere curious aside. I think he was telling us why people traveled miles to get it at that time of year - the berries. The reason mistletoe is used at Christmas is not so much that it was pagan or green, but that it has those berries. Pliny tells us those berries could be used to make a glue that was used in catching birds, called "birdlime" (ch. 94). Those berries are why it was collected at Christmas. It useful and it was aesthetically pleasing. It does not seem so odd to me at all that a plant with medicinal leaves would pull double-duty as a simple farm decoration with its pretty white berries around Christmastime. And being a simple farmer's decoration would explain why we hear nothing about it until the 1600s. Nobody cared enough to mention it.
Now that you have my best guess, let's really dig in and explore all the options.
Why
We have a choice for why we have mistletoe at Christmas.
Was it A) a simple matter of decorating with greenery and berries, or B) primarily due to mistletoe's medicinal use, or C) some pagan tradition continued?
We cannot know for certain, but judging by 1) the way it is spoken of medicinally so often, and 2) how the berries are useful and pretty, 3) how it seems to not have been used in churches, and 4) how holly and ivory and other greenery was much more popular, and 5) the "many miles" people would travel to bring it home -- I prefer a combination of the decorative and the medicinal explanations.
I don't think it was only a matter of decorating, or else mistletoe would be found in churches as well as homes. For some reason there was a distinction. It started in rural homes, it stayed in homes. I think medicine also plays a part here. Farms used mistletoe on their cattle. That is why they had it. That is why they decorated with it. And thus, the combination of decorative and medicinal has the explanatory power.
That is the opposite of what a pagan coopt would normally do. When we hear about coopting pagan things, we usually hear about churches taking over the thing so it can convert more people. As Martha mentioned in her post "Falsely Accused? Catholics Rejected Trees as too ... Protestant?", Catholics tended to do everything communally at church. If it was coopted, you should find it in the churches. But mistletoe wasn't at church, holly and ivy were.
And from which pagans would it have been coopted? The Druids? No. Far too old, and the current custom does not resemble any known historically accurate account of Druidic ritual. The Romans? No. Same reasons as the Druids. The Anglo Saxons? No. We have absolutely nothing about mistletoe from them. Not even from their medicinal literature. The Danish Vikings? Maybe, but mistletoe was an ominous symbol of death for them at the time we are interested in, plus it leaves at least a 500-year gap from when they stopped invading to when we first read about mistletoe at Christmas. The Normans? Maybe, but they were the aristocracy not the farmers, and they were Christian. They would have gotten it from Christians.
I think pagan coopt has less explanatory power than medicine and decoration. But if I absolutely had to choose one pagan group as the prime suspect, I would choose the Danish Vikings. They were farmers, and their ominous symbol of death sounds just like Shakespeare. Perhaps the Christians turned the symbol into life and love early on? I cannot prove this, though.
Let me expand on why it probably didn't come from the Druids into Christmas.
1) Commonality does not prove causality. In other words, just because Christians and Druids both used mistletoe does not mean one tradition must come directly from the other. The Romans and Norse used it, too. It can't come from them all.
2) They used mistletoe in different ways. Druids used it for medicine and religious ritual. Christians used it for medicine and home decoration. You might say the decoration was religious, but the religious ritual of the Druids was on a whole different level. The Christians did not use it like that. And nothing says Druids decorated with the stuff.
3) The common use between the two, medicine, is a secular use, not religious.
4) The time-gap is too large. We see no records of mistletoe in use as a Christmas item until the 1600s. Let's be conservative and call that 700 years after the last Druids disappeared.
5) We have no records directly linking the two. The case is entirely circumstantial.
6) Druids used mistletoe at a different time of the year.
So, Druids make a much less effective candidate than some people believe.
When
As for when the tradition of mistletoe at Christmas started, I think the 'when' depends heavily on the 'why'.
Was it A) always a tradition, or B) started around the turn of the millennium, or C) started in the 1600s?
If medicinal is the right choice for why, then the when would be always. It was there from the very beginning. There never would have been a time when one farmhouse or the other did not have some mistletoe hanging up to dry. I would imagine this unassuming little farming decoration just hung around farmhouses in the winter until it was eventually associated with Christmas.
But if pagan is the right choice for why, then the tradition would have started by the turn of the millennium. Britain was a complicated mix of cultures overlapping - Celts, Romans, German Anglo Saxons, Danish "Vikings", and the French/Danish Normans. How can we know which is the one? We can't. The kicker is mistletoe not being mentioned until the 1600s. That tends to make earlier cultures lose their explanatory power. The Vikings raided from about 780-1100 AD. And William the Conqueror, a French Norman, was crowned King of England on Christmas day in 1066. That puts things right around the turn of the millennium. Now, we are only missing 400 years of history rather than 700+.
The third option is that it really did not start until the 1500s. It's possible. But what would explain this? Perhaps the Reformation. 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, the options expanded. Anything green at that time was used. The problem with this is, Protestants complained mistletoe was too pagan. On one hand, that weakens this option. On the other hand, it wouldn't have mattered in secular decoration. Then, in the late 1600s, the Protestants stopped suppressing Christmas and embraced once again the old Catholic symbols. This option is a mixed bag.
You can read about this in Ronald Hutton's "Stations of the Sun".
Regarding that pesky and obvious lack of any mention of mistletoe and Christmas until the 1600s - bear in mind lack of proof is not proof of lack.
But something needs to explain it.
I feel it is the third option - use of mistletoe really did start in the 1500s - explains the lack of info the best, but I just cannot get excited about this option. If mistletoe was being used for medicine the whole time, I can't accept no one decorated with it. So, perhaps, what a few rural farmers did to liven up their homes just wasn't worth the mention. Perhaps, before the Renaissance you just didn't get the kind of literature that would mention such things. Perhaps, medieval people didn't waste away their lives worrying about "once pagan, always pagan".
My speculation in summary:
For the why - I prefer a combination of the medicinal and the decorative. My distant second choice being a blend of all three, medicinal and decorative and pagan - but Viking pagan not Druidic.
For the when - I think mistletoe was just something rural people had all along, without too much thought about how it began. And in the winter, it had berries!
It just had what simple farming people wanted it to have at the time they wanted it. I suspect the use of mistletoe in rural farmhouses was just too obscure to mention.
That is my speculation. Take it for what it is.
MIND YOUR SOURCES
In this final section, I want to discuss lessons learned. I was tracking down some sources cited, when I experienced something I want to share.
The entire point of this section is a lesson on minding your source material!
I started with Ronald Hutton's "Stations of the Sun". On page 34, he says, "Those who condemned the practice [of decorating greenery at Christmas] included St Gregory Nazianzen, Bishop Martin of Braga, and the clerics who gathered at the latter's Council of Braga. Hutton cites some sources."
Well, yes I do need to know more about this, thank you! So, I start tracking down sources cited.
That led me to T. F. Dyer's "British Popular Customs", and that led me to John Brand's "Observations on the Popular Antiquities of the Britons", and that led me to Henry Bourne's "Antiquities of the Common People" (a thoroughly anti-Catholic screed). On page 137 (not 173, as Brand states), Bourne mentions the Second Council of Bracara [Braga] canon 73. Bourne says it, "forbad Christians to deck their houses with bey leaves and green boughs."
Wouldn't that be an interesting nugget to see with my own eyes! That is exactly the kind of thing I am looking for. That's just what Hutton said I would find. I needed to know more about this Council of Braga/Bracara.
Assuming Bracara is Braga, because that is clearly what Hutton concluded and I could find no other candidates, the Second Council of Braga had only 10 decrees, not 73. None of the three Councils of Braga had 73 decrees. The Third Council of Braga did have a condemnation of superstitions, but it was talking about divination and soothsaying. (It does give some insight into what they considered "pagan", and it wasn't decorations.)
OK, fine! Maybe they mistook the Council of Braga for the Council of Paris.
Sadly, we have no good record remaining of the bulk of the decrees that came out of the Council of Paris. This entire trail turns out to be a complete dead end.
So, I turned toward Gregory Nazianzen. I started again that same process of chasing quotes. This also came to a dead end. Nazianzen never said anything of the sort.
Frustrated, I started googling this and that, trying to find something helpful that I might have missed, when lo and behold my old friend Roger Pearse shows up as a search result. You may remember him from several of my other Christmas posts. Turns out Roger did the exact same thing as I was doing, five years ago. You can read about it in his post "'Feasting in excess': a fingerprint phrase in quotations of Gregory Nazianzen on the Nativity"
Neither the Council of Braga nor Gregory Nazianzen condemned greenery. The quotes are fake. Yet they find their way into material like Ronald Hutton's, and more. Isn't that how it goes!
This is not by any means the only time this happened to me.
Take the following quote from John Timbs, where he quotes another author, Charles Vallancey:
"The Druids and Celtic nations called it all-heal and guidhel. They had an extraordinary veneration for the number three, says [Charles] Vallancey, and they chose the mistletoe, because not only its berries, but its leaves also, grow in clusters of three united to one stalk; but the leaves grow in pairs only"
-John Timbs, "Things Not Generally Known", Fleet Street, 1856, p. 158.
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| Mistletoe |
I have read some of Charles Vallancey's works for myself after I found this quote. Some of the things he said were obviously made up. When I asked ChatGPT about Valancey, it replied, "Vallancey was a somewhat controversial figure in his time due to his speculative theories, some of which were later discredited." Ya think? Like a Hislop, but for Druids. Vallancey's claims are fake.
Other authors quoted by Timbs say equally unbelievable things, if not more so.
Timbs quotes one Richard Stuckley, who claimed the Druids used mistletoe as a symbol of their Messiah. That is just absurd! Druids believed in reincarnation. They had no Messiah. Stuckley's claims are fake, too.
Timbs seemed to quote anything, regardless of the quality. But, then again, he never claimed they were good quotes. It was the 1800s, what do you expect? He didn't have much to work with. The problem is, people quote Timbs, and they do it without letting anyone know about these issues with Timbs. Perhaps they themselves aren't aware there are issues in the first place.
Remember earlier in this article when I said, "All of these claims that 'such and such thing is part of Christmas because of the Druids and the winter solstice' seem to be made up after the fact by people with only part of the information they needed"? Yep. Turns out people make stuff up all the time. It isn't just Hislop and Hoeh and Armstrong and Meredith who do it.
What does this tell us, folks? It says to us, mind your source material! Do not believe everything you read! Dig. Test the spirits.
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.
Do you recall those two quotes from the start of this post? The ones from Rod Meredith and Herbert Armstrong. Yet 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.
The case against 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:
- We do not know when mistletoe became associated with Christmas. The first mention was from 1656.
- We do not know who is responsible for associating mistletoe with Christmas. It could be anyone, or simply an old farming tradition that had nothing to do with any group in particular.
- It seemed to be a rural thing, not popular in churches at all. English churches preferred holly and ivy.
- Mistletoe was used medicinally and ritually throughout most of the western world since forever ago. It wasn't just the Druids. Everyone seemed to use it.
- Pliny said mistletoe was used as an animal medicine especially in summer. Mistletoe is not just a winter thing.
- 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 either in fall or spring, not at the winter solstice. Some say Druids had no solstice celebrations. Mistletoe was not particularly a winter tradition for them.
- If the mistletoe tradition involved a continuation of a pagan practice, the Druids aren't even the best candidate.
- If mistletoe was not used in churches, that speaks against it being coopted from pagans by the church.
- Mistletoe was not an aphrodisiac ...except for animals. Mistletoe did not get its romantic overtones until the 1700s.
- And there is quite a bit of misinformation floating around, started after the Reformation.
Oh yeah. And that the Reformation gave us mouth herpes, Bad Santa, and George Michaels singing "Last Christmas".
OK. I am joking right there. But it did unfortunately make Christmas mor secular.
I want to rant for just a second. Part of the problem that causes all this misinformation is people don't use their imaginations and put themselves into the time of the people they have in mind. You have to put yourself in their shoes. Where do I live? Who is around me? What do I eat? How do I know what time it is? How long does it take to travel? What else is happening this year? Asking simple questions like this is half of how I debunk things.
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.
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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
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