Reprinted by permission from "Simple Gifts, Seasonal Reflec-tions" by Marueen Killoran, minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville, North Carolina.

So now is come our joyful feast;
Let everyone be jolly.
Each room with ivy leaves is dressed
And every post with holly!

It is a centuries-old custom for people to drag the outdoors into their homes at the time of the winter solstice. This little verse was written by George Whittier over 400 years ago. Two hun-dred years before that an early history recorded that "Against the time of Christmas, every-man's home, as also their parish churches, was decked with holly, ivy, bays and whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be green."
I notice that some of our Chris-tian co-religionists are railing against the custom. It is a pagan tradition, some poor, benighted pastors have declaimed. The Christmas tree--and Christmas greens--have no place in church. It may be that the min-ister thinks he is some kind of radical, but the truth is that Christmas greens have been in trouble with the church off and on since Christmas was in-vented.
Mistletoe
Take mistletoe. The earliest Christian church feared the mis-tletoe's power in the hearts of the people, and they trashed it royally. Mistletoe was an "em-blem of unwholesome supersti-tion." It was the Garden of Eden's "forbidden fruit." With more poetry than possiblity it was widely denounced as the wood from which the Romans had made the cross of Christ. When I was growing up there was something slightly risque about mistletoe, and I knew, though no one remembered why, that you simply did not take that white-berried plant to church.
When we deal with Christmas greens, we're dealing with syn-cretism at its finest--bits and pieces of tradition, some from here, some from around the corner, woven together into the season we celebrate today. We're dealing with syncretism because that's what Christmas is: some traditions old, some new, some sacred, some what would be called secular, strands of tradition woven deeply into the psyche of the human com-munity.
Mistletoe, for example, has been named in more than one sexual harassment suit of late, but it has a history which is long and honorable. Did you know, for example, that mistle-toe is the original "golden bough" of the ancient Druids? It was a holy spirit, to those folks, something brought to them from heaven to encircle the oak that was sacred to their religion.
Every year at the time of the winter stolstice, the Druids went forth in flowing white robes to gather the holy spirit of the golden bough. The Arch Druid climbed the sacred tree and cut the mistletoe with a special knife. He held out the plant and blessed it and dropped it carefully into a white scarf which was carefully held high in the air by four maidens. The mistletoe did not touch the ground in either life or death, for the Druids believed that if the golden bough touched the earth, all who lived thereon would have ill fortune for the year that lay ahead.
Each person took some of the holy bough to their home. They fastened it over the stable door to keep the cattle free from dis-ease. They hung it over the marriage bed to ensure the fer-tility that would allow the community to continue. They brewed it into tea if they wanted to see the future, chewed a sprig for relief from ulcers. And above all the Dru-ids placed bits of blessed mis-teltoe over the doorway of their homes, to ward off evil spirits, and all who entered received kisses from the owners to seal their friendship.
Even the Roman soldiers rec-ognized mistletoe as a symbol of love and peace--when ene-mies met under it, they laid down their weapons, embraced one another and declared a day of truce.
In Scandinavia there's a legend about a sun god Balder, the much-beloved bringer of light and all that is good. One night Balder dreamed his own death, and when he woke up he told the dream to his mother, who was Freya, the goddess of love. Now no mother, not even a goddess, wants to hear her son talking about his death. Freya would have none of it, and she went right off to every living thing and she went to the earth and the air and the water and the fire, and from each she ex-tracted a promise that they would never hurt her son.
But, as legends always have it, Freya ignored one plant--for as far as she could tell, the flower-less mistletoe was completely harmless. Hanging around in the wings was the jealous god Loki, and when he spotted Freya's oversight he crafted from the mistletoe a sharp ar-row, which in its turn found its way to Balder's heart. The leg-end tells us that when Balder died all the universe was plunged into mourning. So pro-found was Freya's grief that even the underworld took pity on her, and after three days Balder returned, so that his light illuminated the world at the time of the winter solstice. The innocent mistletoe was lifted up from the ground and wrapped around the tree of life, and Freya's tears dropped on it and became the white berries which the mistletoe wears to-day. From then on it was de-creed that all who pass beneath the mistletoe should kiss, so that the strength of love will be proclaimed and darkness shall never again triumph over the dawn.
I don't have any mistletoe, but if I did, I would invent a Christmas custom right now. I'd hold that mistletoe over my head and look around at all of you, and I'd look in the distant darkness of what I see when I close my eyes, and I'd let the mistletoe be a tangible symbol of the longing that I bring to this and every season, the long-ing for peace in our hearts, peace in our homes, peace in this land, peace throughout the world.

Let us be united
Let us speak in harmony.
Let our minds apprehend alike.
Unified to our hearts.
Common be our intentions.
Perfect be our unity.
(from the Rig Veda)

Holly
Where I grew up holly was a dried out brown-looking sprig which never came in anything larger than a small plastic bag. If you were lucky, you got a berry or two. Usually they had fallen off.
Then I did my internship in Vancouver, British Columbia. My flat smelled of long-dead rodents and I doubted the bath-room down the hall had ever seen a scouring pad. But out-side my kitchen window was a view to save my soul--for there were snowcapped peaks and just at arm's length was a holly tree that stretched itself to three stories high. I called my news-letter column "Under the Holly Tree," and to this day I find the holly a symbol of new begin-nings and hope.
It was no surprise to me to learn that the Druids thought the spirit of the holly tree was re-sponsible for keeping beauty in the world when their sacred oak and all the other trees were bare. The holly had mysterious powers--it warded off witches and troublemakers, it protected from lightening. A syrup from the leaves was thought o cure a cough. I don't recommend you try that today, but it can't hurt to tape a sprig onto your bed-post and who knows, maybe it will ensure you have pleasant dreams.
The church didn't like holly any more than it liked mistle-toe, but people were persistent. The reality is that joy will tri-umph over fear and darkness ultimately loses to the dawn--the people knew this and they held on to their stories. A leg-end grew up that the holly had at one point concealed Jesus from his enemies, and thus the plant was allowed to keep its leaves year-round. Folks used to believe that if you wore holly to church on Christmas Eve, you would gain the gift of sec-ond sight. In Britain, beekeep-ers placed a piece of holly in each hive, to commemorate the legend that when the Baby Je-sus was born the bees sang a song, and in his honor they have been humming every since.
The folks in Medieval England had a tradition you may want to note. It mattered which type of holly was brought into the house first--if it was the prickly kind, then a man would rule the household for the coming year, it the smooth kind came first, the ruler for the year would be a woman. It was the men's repon-sibility to "deck the halls" with holly, but apparently it was the women's job to see that the work got done--for custom had it that if a maid asked a man to "deck the halls" and he refused--or even forgot--the young woman would steal every pair of trousers that poor fellow owned, and nail them to the courtyard gate. And on top of that, the poor man did not get to kss a single maid when the mis-tletoe came 'round.
And yet, for all the varied cus-toms, the holly, like mistletoe is a symbol of peace. There is a lot of power in the tradition which holds that a quarrel which cannot be resolved will be abandoned and forgiveness assured if the parties meet be-neath the branches of a holly tree. In the words of the medie-val poet:
Be links no longer broken;
Be sweeet forgiveness spoken,
Under the Holly Bough.

Fir trees
We play with strong magic, my friends, when we deck our halls with boughs of holly and fir and pine. We touch ancient tradi-tions of hope and tap deep into our cultural memory, for the reminder that always and eve-rywhere there have been people longing for peace.
"Decking the halls" has been a custom almost forever. In their own way even the ancient Egyptians did it. To make sure there would be a victory of life after death, Egyptians dragged green date palm trees into their houses. As far as we know they didn't decorate the trees, but we know the Romans did. To celebrate Saturnalia they cov-ered trees with ornaments and lighted candles, and on the top they placed a star-shaped object to honor the god of the sun. The Druids couldn't be left out, and they honored Odin by tying gilded apples and little cakes into trees. Throughout the an-cient world, trees were a sym-bol of life, of honor, of hope. And then came Christendom.
In 597 Pope Gregory I realized that the ancient pagan rituals had to be co-opted if the Eng-lish were to be persuaded to convert to Christianity, so he concocted the story that the fir tree represent the elect in heaven and therefore could not be used for any human aspects of celebration or delight.
It took the Prostestant reformer Martin Luther to bring the tree down to earth. It seems that Lu-ther was walking through the forest one snowy Christmas eve, and was moved beyond words by the beauty of the ev-ergreens seen by starlight. He hurried home and tried to tell his family what he had seen--but to his wife and children he was just talking about another tree. "Frankly, Martin, I don't see what you're so excited about." So, we are told, Luther went back to the woods, cut down a small fir tree, and brought it home. On the tree he placed small lighted candles, to represent the stars in the sky the night Jesus was born.
In this country, it was a Unitar-ian minister, the Rev. Charles Follen, who in 1832 used no fewer than seven dozen candles to create the first decorated Christmas tree. And it was an-other minister, not a Unitarian, who was the first to bring a Christmas tree into an Ameri-can Church in Cleveland in 1851. The experiment didn't work, because his people were outraged at the pagan custom and dumped the tree--and the minister--outside in the snow.
Those are the facts, but Christ-mas is a time of sotry, and I want to leave you with the Ital-ian legend which says that on the night Jesus was born every living creature of the earth journeyed to Bethlehem to honor the baby. The trees in the forest picked up their roots and made their way thence: the olive, to give its fruit; the palm, its dates.
But the fir tree had no gifts, and besides it was a small tree and so weary it could hardly stand. The larger trees pushed and shoved to get a glimpse of the babe, and the little fir leaned sadly against a wall, knowing it had no chance. An angel, we are told, felt sorry for the tiny tree, and looking to the stars, called them to come down and decorate its boughs.
The angel made a gentle sound. Baby Jesus looked up, saw the shining tree, and gave his first infant smile. And so it came to pass, that the fir trees are al-ways lighted at Christmas, for it is right that the holy child in each one of us should know beauty and be pleased.

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