Have you been kissed under the mistletoe?

For many years, I pinned a plastic mistletoe to the door jam dividing my foyer and living room and standing underneath it I did receive a kiss or two, but never did I ponder the genetics or habitat of the plant, or the tradition behind the expected kiss. After all, all it was was an artificial plant; packed up each year for the next until it fell apart and was tossed in the trash. That was the extent of my relationship with the tradition of mistletoe.

Until yesterday.

When I walk my dog, I have the habit of gazing up at the trees within my field of vision. In retirement botany has captured my fancy and if I see a plant or a tree I do not recognize, I will spend a considerable amount of time on identification. The easiest way to go about this is to ask the homeowner if they are around to ask. For days, gazing up at this one particular deciduous completely bare towering tree, I noticed mid way up on a branch an almost perfectly spherule living plant, clearly unrelated to the tree.

Huh. And I know the homeowner and I planned to ask him, had not seen him, and then when I was walking past another house, I saw the same odd spherule plant on another tree. This time, the homeowner was outside and I said hello, and then I asked pointing upward,

“Am I seeing things, or is that a live plant growing on the branch of your tree?”

“You are not seeing things. It’s mistletoe. It’s a parasite.”

“Oh WOW,” I said, and I thanked her and left and couldn’t wait to go home and read all about the nature of mistletoe. When I hear the word parasite, as a dog owner, I think about fleas and ticks, but a plant as a parasite? Never before had I given it any thought. Sure enough, after researching, mistletoe is a parasite and can be so invasive to the structure of a tree, it can kill it by literally sucking the life out of it.

After reading about its origin, I then had to read about the folklore behind the tradition of kissing beneath the mistletoe.

Norsemen believed mistletoe to be a plant of peace and if enemies met under it they were obliged to stop fighting for at least a day. Known to have been found only in lightning struck oaks (the first part of the myth), mistletoe was also believed to have been imbued with the power of the lightning, and therefore sexual potency, hence considered as a symbol of fertility. After all, this made sense, since when all the trees are bare and most plants have died away, mistletoe is green and thriving. It was used in Celtic religious ceremonies and along with the killing of two white bulls (go figure), mistletoe was made into an elixir to cure infertility and the effects of poison. I wonder how that worked out? Thankfully, at some point it all got watered down to a kiss.

It is a joy to learn something new, but more importantly, to have a place to share my enthusiasm over learning something new with my FAVORITE AWESOME prose friends.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU VERY COOL WRITERS!

Love ye all so much here is my kiss to you under the mistletoe.