By Steven Foster – We link the Christmas tradition of catching a kiss beneath mistletoe hung in a doorway to long-forgotten pagan traditions and the mysterious rites of Druids. We may graft that belief of transmission from the Druids to Christian rituals to figures such as St. Patrick, who supplanted ancient nature dogmas with Christianity in 4th century Ireland. Dozens of trees books and other printed histories of the last 500 years inevitably describe the use of mistletoe in the context of Druid ritual sacrifice in which a priest clad in a white robe cuts the throat of two bulls with a golden sickle. Mistletoe (harvested from an oak tree) is then taken in a drink to impart fertility to those who are barren, and serve as an antidote for all poisons.
That story often wrapped in Christian scolding for ungodly heathen practices and repeated ad infinitum in the historical literature, predates Christianity. The story comes from book 16 of the encyclopedic 37-volume Natural History of the Roman scholar and officer, Pliny the Elder, who lived from 23-79 AD. His Natural History work was completed in 77 AD.
Western knowledge of Celtic rituals and Druid rites comes to us from the pre-Christian Roman occupation of what is now England and Wales. Julius Caesar invaded Brittania in 55 and 54 BCE. During the time of Pliny’s service to the Roman army in what is now Germany, the emperor Claudius annexed England in 43 AD, which became the Provincia Britannia of the Roman Empire from 43-410 AD. Our knowledge of the ritual use of mistletoe in ancient Celtic tradition comes to us from the observations of Roman soldiers as recorded by Pliny.
In England, mistletoe (Viscum album) growing on oaks is rare (though more common on other tree species), so the Druids paid high regard to mistletoe growing on oaks. Indeed in medical books, well into the Renaissance, that oak mistletoe, Viscus quercus, was believed to have the highest medicinal value for epilepsy and various nervous conditions, and general debility.
Hailing in the New Year, marked by the winter solstice and Christmas tradition of forgotten origin, use of mistletoe for the ritual of Christian gaiety to “catch a kiss” therefore comes down to us from pre-Christian Roman observations of the ceremonies of Druid priest.