Underneath the mistletoe

December 18, 2009 at 3:31 am (Uncategorized)

I like to think of myself as a curious person, the sort who wonders about esoteric things and tries to figure weird stuff out. But as I sat down tonight to write about mistletoe, it struck me like a hammer to the head: What kind of bizarre word is “mistletoe”? How can it be that for 53 years I’ve been singing about mistletoe, and hanging little sprigs of the stuff in my living room, and it never once occurred to me to wonder where that word comes from?

So I looked into it, and alas, I’m still wondering. Turns out nobody’s sure why mistletoe is called mistletoe. My dictionary says it derives from an Old English word for “basil”–”mistel”–plus another word, “tan,” meaning twig. So there you have it: basil twig. Which makes no sense whatsoever. A different theory holds that it derives from a German word for “dung”–”mist”–and “tang,” for “branch,” because mistletoe seeds were spread in the feces of birds flitting between trees. Whatever–neither satisfies me. And mistletoe is just as weird as its name. For one thing, it’s a plant parasite, which is very rare. It grows on host trees—especially oaks, in England, the source of so many of our American holiday customs—and stays evergreen, which our ancestors always considered mysterious and portentous. Mistletoe can cause a condition in its host known as “witch’s broom,” in which a number of shoots spring from a single area of the trunk. When consumed, European mistletoe, Viscum album, causes nausea and diarrhea. Appropriately for a plant of power, it has many legends and stories attached to it. Because it blooms in the dead of midwinter, it was a Druid symbol of immortality and was used to treat infertility. In Christian tradition, mistletoe was once a mighty tree but provided the wood used for the cross, after which it was reduced to a puny vine that can’t live on its own, but relies on its host. I’ve heard that same story about dogwood, though.

Kissing under mistletoe originated in Scandinavia. In Norse myth, the god Baldr’s mother, Frigga, was warned in a dream that her son would die, and as a result made every plant and animal swear to do him no harm. She neglected to include the mistletoe, however, and the jester god Loki tricked another god into killing Baldr with a mistletoe spear—thus introducing winter to the world. The gods eventually brought Baldr back to life (don’t they always), and Frigga declared mistletoe a symbol of love, which is why we still snag kisses beneath it.

But another reason for the plant’s association with fertility and immortality is the resemblance of the berries’ insides to human semen. Honest. I’m not making this up!

Photo by Elie plus licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.