In the column from January 6, 1995 (yes, it’s an OLD column, but I only recently discovered the Straight Dope & am now working my way forward slowly…), Cecil states:
“The pitiless Loki, however, shot an
arrow of mistletoe, which fatally pierced Baldur’s heart.” Granted, there tend to be many different versions of the same myth when it comes to mythological stories, but all the ones that I’ve seen concerning Baldur’s death state that it was Baldur’s blind brother, Hodur, who was tricked by Loki into killing Baldur with a spear made from mistletoe, not Loki himself.
Yes and no; it was Hodur who fired the fatal shot, but Loki helped him aim. Oh, and it was an arrow. The mistletoe is a very small plant; not even the gods can make a spear from it. 
Hey Cecil,
You might want to revisit this one, because I think you blew it with the explanation of why we kiss under the mistletoe.
It has nothing to do with Norse mythology. It’s a Celtic custom. Here’s the way I taught it in a plant taxonomy class.
If you look at a mistletoe inflorescence (flowering stalk) you’ll start to get the idea. Mistletoes have a weird arrangement of flowers,: a shortish, stiff stalk with flowers arranged in pairs, one on either side. They ripen into berries, and often, the last pair of berries to fall off are the the two at the base. Hopefully you can see the phallic imagery here? The berries ripen in the fall. The mistletoe I used to collect for Christmas (admittedly in California) was full of berries.
Moreover, the berries are off-white and kind of sticky when crushed. They are the color of semen, and the pulp is close to the consistency of semen. Biologically, the berry pulp is sticky so that when a bird craps them out, the seeds stick to the branch the bird poop landed. That’s not terribly romantic, so let’s get back to the symbolism, shall we?
Finally, we add in the magical element that mistletoe is one of the few plants in Europe that doesn’t grow in the ground. Instead it grows out of a tree, showing how “magical” it is.
So, you have a plant with phallic-shaped flowering stems, semen-like berries, and it grows apparently by magic I don’t know about you, but the sexual symbolism does kind of jump out. We could comment on the parasitic imagery too (and the way the berries are spread), but I’ll leave that for the kinksters to contemplate.
As for whether you’ll get lucky if you kiss under the mistletoe, that’s up to you. Personally, I think it’s perfectly appropriate to add a bit of sex magic to the holiday, especially when no one looks at it too closely.
Merry Xmas.
Nice post, but you haven’t given an atom of historic evidence. Not even mythological.
Actually, you do need to ask the modern-day druids, who definitely did venerate mistletoe, going all the way back to the old druids.
This is one of those situations where the fact that the Victorians didn’t write it down says precisely nothing about whether mistletoe has any sexual connotations.
As for the anatomy of mistletoe, go look yourself. I’ve handled enough of the plants that I’m pretty comfortable with my assertions.
No you don’t as they are not real druids. There is a total disconnect. Modern druids got their start back in the late 17s and early 1800, full on faux mystic woo twaddle, made up from vague descriptions from writings that are of dubious accuracy.
I really wish the woomongers would give up. I am tired of fake mystical religions, lay lines [which were first described by a guy who liked the victorian version of orineteering and had nothing whatsoever to do with any magical lines in the earth] and all the other woo garbage being passed around.
The New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology disagrees with you, and agrees with the Norse mythological origins. Do you have a cite to counter that?
PS I’d rather not have to type out a bunch of stuff since my cite is [del]prehistoric[/del] a physical book not a web page, but I will if I must.
Modern-day “Druids” are a total fraud.
So what? You can’t just make up history based on what you think makes a cool story. Do that, and you’ll soon find yourself in the outer darkness with Shakespeare deniers and Fomenkoists.
heteromeles’ explanation is more likely that the Scandinavian myth, though everyone else is quite right that a neat theory is not evidence and that modern druids are a modern invention. The idea that anything in English customary behavior is a survival from pagan Norse customs is just ridiculously unlikely. The evidence for that goes:
- Baldr was killed by mistletoe.
- We kiss under mistletoe.
Not exactly compelling. The “Celtic” theory goes:
- Druids gathered mistletoe.
- We kiss under mistletoe.
This is, essentially, the same theory: we find a reference to an ancient people and mistletoe and assume that 1800 years of no documentation means that there was secretly a connection.
It is far more likely that the custom of kissing at the holidays arose first (there’s ample documentations of Christians using the kiss as a greeting in the Middle Ages). The plant was probably used for winter decoration for unrelated reasons: distinctive, available that time of year, pretty. At some point, the two get connected. This has happened with plenty of other traditions: unlucky Friday + unlucky 13, for one.
Where I think heteromeles is right is the symbolic value of the plant. I think the phallic / semen argument goes a bit too far, but the fact that the berries come in pairs is probably relevant. I can’t cite direct evidence, but indirect evidence is a lot of the courting customs involving pairs of nuts, flower lore, etc.
Barring historical evidence, I think that’s the best we can do. People will be upset at ruling out ancient myth, because it would be really cool if it were true, but reality is usually more prosaic.
Dr. Drake you appear to be committing the same sin as the first two theories you dismissed did.
It’s not quite the same sin because I’m not offering it as an explanation, only a hypothesis, and I’m relying on circumstantial evidence and behavioral parallels rather than wishful thinking and the long-discredited theory of survivals. If there is any actual evidence at all, I’ll re-assess the theory. I’m a folklorist, and all I can do is cite Ockham’s razor and tell you that the theory is best that doesn’t rely on ancient origins from an ethnic group that is only marginally connected to the group among whom the custom is attested.
Just for fun, though, let’s rehash the evidence:
77 AD: reference to druids: Pliny the Elder (not a druid, nor a Celt). Note that all of his information is at least secondhand and much of it is suspect.
13th century: story of Baldur in the Younger Edda (Old Norse).
1813: First reference to kissing under the mistletoe, from England.
Note that Pliny also refers to mistletoe promoting conception in women if they carry the plant about with them, but nothing about hanging it or kissing.
Other misc. relevant mistletoe folklore:
1640: A reference to the power of mistletoe against witchcraft: hung around the necks of children.
1656: A reference to decorating with mistletoe at Christmastime, no reference to witches, kissing, or fertility.
1719: Another reference to driving away evil spirits, but no Christmas.
Various other attested beliefs about bringing luck, preventing lightning strikes, curing epilepsy, etc., all from Britain.
Kissing: 1820, Washington Irving talks about removing a berry from the mistletoe each time a kiss is claimed until none are left.
So once again, I suggest that the custom of hanging mistletoe predates the custom of kissing under the mistletoe, and has nothing to do with Norse or Celtic pagans (i.e. druids). I think that’s pretty well supported. As to why kissing, I can only offer a milder form of heteromeles’ hypothesis as the one to beat. (And to note that kissing games are a well-established genre in folklore.)
I’m away from most of my reference books at the moment but if you really want I can re-hash in January.
One way or the other, Cecil did not just make the Baldur connection up. It is to be found in Brewer. (And it is hardly improbable in principle; the Anglo-Saxons were Germanic pagans before they were Christianized, and half of England was ruled by the Danes for a long time.)
Nobody said Cecil made it up. It is a well-known theory that was concocted in the nineteenth century when people believed that most folklore was a survival of pagan mythology. Cecil is not a folklorist and there is no reason he’d be up on the last fifty years of folklore scholarship. Even the idea that a narrative is the origin of a custom is rather suspicious.
Although there are gods who can be reconstructed for Proto-Germanic, Baldur is not among them. There is no evidence that the pagan Anglo-Saxons had anything like the Baldur story. If you want to believe that a tale recorded in medieval Iceland is a reflection of a pagan Anglo-Saxon or even pagan Danish custom that survived unremarked by anyone at all, even the people who commented on mistletoe customs, until suddenly there is a profusion of evidence about mistletoe and kissing in the 19th century—go ahead. I just don’t think it stands up to scrutiny.
Something tells me that mistletoe became a Christmas symbol for the same reason poinsettias are: They’re red and green.
I’m sure there are lots of myths associated with mistletoe simply because it’s an old and mysterious plant, and there might be some connection between mistletoe and pagan winter celebrations and Christmas. But, in the end, the color scheme.
I’ve seen many different references about kissing under the mistletoe. These range from the 19th century Victorians who started the custom, ancient Scandinavians, ancient Greece who did a whole lot of kissing at random times, and even references to the Celts. I’ve seen references that mistletoe kissing was common in 16th century England. My theory is that once someone found a surefire method to secure a kiss from a pretty maiden, that tradition would spread pretty fast and furious all around Europe.
By the way, Shakespeare referred to mistletoe in Titus Andronicus as a reference to the Norse story of the slaying of Balder. Thus, the story was well known to the English at least in the 16th century. So, Cecil’s theory isn’t as outrageous as Dr. Drake claims.
No, he doesn’t. Shakespeare is really easy to check: he refers to “baleful mistletoe” and “die suddenly,” but you really have to reach to connect this with Baldur, and there’s no connection at all to Christmas, house decorations, or kissing.
[QUOTE=Shakespeare]
A barren detested vale you see it is;
The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O’ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe.
Here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds,
Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven.
And when they show’d me this abhorred pit,
They told me here at dead time of the night,
A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,
Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,
Would make such fearful and confused cries
As any mortal body hearing it
Should straight fall mad, or else die suddenly. (II.iii.93–104)
[/QUOTE]
Mistletoe is more commonly green and white. (Some species have red berries, but the most widespread species have white ones.)
On the other hand, it’s green at Christmastime, so using in as part of the Christmas decorations would fit in with the custom of bringing in those plants which are still green and growing in the dead of winter: evergreen trees and boughs, the holly and the ivy, and all that. And, for that matter, poinsettias.