The Fourth Day of Christmas...

So I've decided to step off my soapbox and go all "homeschool-y" for today's post.  While I would certainly not categorize us as unschoolers, I do try and follow the rabbit trails that my 3rd grader occasionally wants to go down.  This week, it was mistletoe!

On the fourth day of Christmas God blessed me with a parasitic plant spread by bird feces, 

a challenge for our gift-giving,

peace about the fat man in a red suit...

and a sweet party with new and old friends!

I did a little research on what mistletoe is, but more importantly, how it became the bane of office parties everywhere.  It is a parasite, meaning that it moves into a host tree, attaches itself, and feeds off of its nutrients.  How does it get there, one might ask?  It is spread by bird feces moving from tree to tree.  In fact, the name "mistletoe" may have come from the German roots mist (dung) and tang (branch).  So now, in addition to "angel", "stocking", and "Advent", we can add "feces" and "dung" to this week's spelling list.  Lovely.

Kissing under the mistletoe has become somewhat of a rite of passage during the holiday season- so much that you can mail-order fresh mistletoe if you don't feel like climbing a nearby tree.  How did that happen?  According to Wikipedia, "In cultures across pre-Christian Europe, mistletoe was seen as a representation of divine male essence (and thus romance, fertility and vitality), possibly due to a resemblance between the berries and semen."  Eww.

Washington Irving wrote about this in "Christmas Eve", describing the activities in a New England farmhouse leading up to Christmas:

Here were kept up the old games of hoodman blind, shoe the wild mare, hot cockles, steal the white loaf, bob apple, and snap dragon; the Yule-clog and Christmas candle were regularly burnt, and the mistletoe with its white berries hung up, to the imminent peril of all the pretty housemaids.  

Legend dictates that once you steal your kiss, you remove a berry from the branch.  Once the berries have all been plucked, a woman is no longer expected to pucker up.  The berries, incidentally, are poisonous, causing great gastro-intestinal discomfort.  Much like the feeling of regret you may have after meeting the wrong person under the storied evergreen.

Scholars believe that kissing under the mistletoe has its origins in Norse legends.  It was the "plant of peace" in ancient Scandinavia.  If enemies met under the mistletoe in the forest, they would lay down their weapons and embrace, calling a truce until the next day.  Even earlier than that was a legend surrounding a Norse god being killed by a spear fashioned from mistletoe.  His mother pronounced mistletoe to be sacred and to be used for love rather than death.

In past centuries, it has been hung in homes to ward off evil spirits, prevent witches from entering, and to extinguish house fires.  It has been used in pagan wedding ceremonies as a sign of fertility.  It has been attributed to a girl's chance of marrying in the following year.  These days, it is probably fodder for a good work-place sexual harassment case.  Regardless of your motivation, you'd better pucker up!