We’ve seen it in enough holiday rom-coms, from parties to family gatherings, the mistletoe is a very well-known Christmas item and tradition. While it stems from Norse mythology and Greek and Roman medicine, how did it end up being everyone’s most loved or most despised Christmas decoration? The mistletoe’s ties to both love and fertility from mythology is what encorporated the plant in Christmas traditions, as Reader’s Digest details:
Since this healing plant blossoms even in the cold winter, Celtic Druids thought it restored fertility, too. On the mythology side, legend says the gods used mistletoe to resurrect Odin’s son Baldur from the dead. And Baldur’s mother, the goddess of love, vowed to kiss whoever passed the plant, a symbol of love.
Ties with fertility and love stuck with the plant through the 18th century and were easily incorporated into Christmas celebrations. It reportedly started with lower-class servants in England before moving up to the middle classes, according to TODAY.
Versions of the tradition have changed throughout the years, too. One version says couples who kiss should also take a berry from the mistletoe with each kiss, and another says that refusing a kiss under the mistletoe is bad luck.
image credit: via Reader’s Digest
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"On the mythology side, legend says the gods used mistletoe to resurrect Odin’s son Baldur from the dead. And Baldur’s mother, the goddess of love, vowed to kiss whoever passed the plant, a symbol of love." Not quite. Baldur was killed by a piece of mistletoe. When Baldur started dreaming of his death, his mother Frigg went around to everything in the world having them swear not harm her son. Dismissing it as too weak and insignificant, Frigg failed to ask mistletoe. Confident in Baldur’s invincibility, the gods amused themselves by throwing weapons and any random thing they could find at Baldur and watching them bounce off of him, leaving him unscathed. Loki found out about the omission and made a spear of mistletoe and convinced the blind god Hodr to throw it at Baldur. The projectile pierced the god, and he fell down dead. Baldur ended up in the underworld and had to remain there with the goddess Hel until after Ragnarök, when he and his brother Höðr were reconciled and ruled the new earth together with Thor's sons. Baldur's mother was Frigg a goddess associated with foresight and wisdom. Frigg is the wife of Odin. She dwells in the wetland halls of Fensalir.
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