Kissing Under the Mistletoe

 

Mistletoe, one of America’s favorite holiday decorations, brings to mind an especially pleasant custom: that of catching an unsuspecting (or so it may seem) sweetheart “under the mistletoe” for a kiss. The green leaved, white-berried plant really does have quite a romatic history. References to it appear as far back in history as the days of fhe gladiators. The Romans made first recorded use of the plant as a symbol of peace. Enemies meeting under it were required to discard their weapons and declare a truce. Parallels in later history occur in Norse mythology, which records the mistletoe plant as a symbol of love. The custom of kissing beneath the bright leaves comes from the Norse marriage rite in which it was used as a major decoration.

A writer in the London Daily Telegraph conversing with a street-vender of imitated holly in Christmas week, asked him whether the mistletoe, of which a plentiful supply was in the market, was ever sold with artificial berries. “There’s a lot of rubbish talked about mistletoe,” said he, “and I dare say it’s very pretty to read about it in Christmas tales and to see it in Christmas pictures, but poor people don't care anything about it. It's all very well, perhaps, among the well-to-do sort of people, who can afford to invite old and young to all manner of gay goings-on, but among them that are always working and driving for a living, they got something else to think about when they get a chance of a bit of a jollification.’’ But even among the humblest of the laboring classes the young fellows have sweethearts, and at their Christmas parties, kissing under the mistletoe is surely start of the fun. “Well, that's where it is at, perhaps,” returned the old fellow, after a few moments’ reflection, “the young fellows don’t see the fun of it. They do their courting steadfast and with a hearty will, just in a manner of speaking, as they set about the work they get a living by. 

And when a young fellow tacks on to a young gal, meaning to marry her, he doesn’t usually see the force of being so very polite as to let another young fellow kiss her just because got a sprig of mistletoe in his hand or catches her passing under a bit of it hung up. It might go down in company where they practices genteel manners,” said Bill’s father, “but in homely circles like them round about the New Cut and Lambeth Walk, a young fellow who tried it on would most likely get his head punched, which, of course, would make a disturbance and spoil the harmony. No, sir, it isn’t in poor neighborhoods that mistletoe is much sought after. When there’s a glut of it, and you can buy a good-sized bush for about sixpence, it will sell in the Cut and such market places, but there isn't a hundredth part the hankering after it among poor people there is for holly.” — The Weekly Calistogan, 1882

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