Bringing in evergreens is one of the best rituals of Winter: it’s a reminder that, though the nights are dark and the trees are bare, green life stubbornly persists. In my house we keep our halls decked until Imbolc, to get us through to the first stirrings of Spring (some traditions say decorations should be taken down by Twelfth Night - but there is an older Scottish one of waiting for Imbolc. Perhaps we risk bad luck, but it keeps our spirits up and the evil spirits of seasonal depression at bay).
Holly, Ivy and Mistletoe are traditional - though the custom of decorating houses with Ivy and Mistletoe at Christmas was, at one point, banned by the church because it was just too pagan. Evergreen trees only came to these Isles in the Victorian era; before that, Christmas tree would mean not Pine, but Holly.
The carol The Holly and the Ivy references a midwinter ritual where a parade would be led by a boy dressed in Holly and a girl dressed in Ivy - walking with green Nature through Winter and out the other side. Traditionally, Holly represented the masculine, and Ivy represented the feminine, which could offer some fun symbolism to play with for the folklore-forward queer.
The place of Holly and Ivy in the ecosystem is intertwined in their folklore as protective plants. As deciduous leaves fall, both remain a shelter for birds, foxes, squirrels and rabbits. Mistletoe is an important winter food for birds; where it’s cleared, birds and other species decline so much that it’s considered a keystone species.
In Britain, Holly was hung outside the house throughout the year to either protect from malevolent fairies, or to allow the fairies to shelter inside without friction with humans (I’m familiar with something like this from the number of spiders that we accidentally welcome into our home with our Yuletide greenery). These protective properties made it taboo to cut down a whole tree; thanks to this reciprocal protection, there are Holly trees that are 400 years old.
Delving deeper into the stories, we find the Holly King: one face of the spirit of the forest, he rules from summer solstice (when the light starts to wane) to Winter Solstice, when the Oak King defeats him, and the light starts to come back.
Kissing under the mistletoe has a few potential origin stories. It’s a symbol of fertility, because people thought that it spontaneously generated from birds (they weren’t far off - birds eat the berries, and the sticky juice glues seeds to their beaks, so when they clean their beak on another branch the seeds get stuck there). So kissing under the mistletoe held traditions about how likely you were to get married the next year.
Another origin is the Norse story of Baldur, killed by Loki with a mistletoe arrow. In some stories his mother, Frigg, negotiated his release from the underworld, and in celebration declared mistletoe a symbol of love, peace and truce; enemies who met under mistletoe would lay down their weapons.
Whatever greenery you bring into the house this Yuletide - to protect you or bring peace, to remind you of green life or to connect you to the old ways - the traditions all agree that you should dispose of it respectfully, by burning or burying; some say that anything not taken care of will turn into pixies and plague the house for the rest of the year. Either way, it’s a beautiful thing to give a little ritual to the green leaves that help us through the long dark nights, and hold our faith in new life in Spring.
By Linden MacMahon, Writer, Craft Workshop Instructor, Performer & Arts & Nature Connection Facilitator, lindenkatherinemcmahon.org