Pagan Christmas (16 page)

Creeping myrtle (Vinca minor L., Apocynaceae) contains idole alkaloids. Its five-petaled flower looks like a pentagram, the “druid’s mark.” This is why it was considered a plant of witches and sorcerers. “While collecting the evergreen, all who picked it had to be free from any impurity” (Bourke 1913, 409). (Kathmandu, Nepal, March 2003)

Periwinkle (Vinca major L., Apocynaceae) is also called singrün or sorcerer’s violet. It was considered a magical protection against the so-called kehrhexen, dangerous beings from an upside-down world: “These witches mostly walk around with their heads on upside down, but you can’t see them. Whoever is curious to see an upside-down witch only needs to put three sprigs of periwinkle above the door through which the witch is walking, and he will see at once that her head is upside down” (Söhns 1920, 45).

Mistletoe: Winter Woods Green

Mistletoe opens the doors to the underworld and provides protection in the face of magic and illness… . The Germanic peoples needed it for every magic potion.

SCHÖPF 1986, 115

Viscum album L., Viscaceae (European mistletoe)1

OTHER NAMES

All-heal (Old English), Donarbesen (“Thor’s broom”), Donnerbesen (“thunder broom,” drudenfuss (Tirol), gui (French), Hexenbesen (“witches’ broom”), knister (“crackling”), knisterholz (“crackling wood”), marentacken (Schleswig-Holstein, “branch against nightmares”), maretak (Dutch), mistlestein, pentagram, vischio comune (Italian), wintergrün (“wintergreen”), Wintergrünholz (“winter green wood”)

Mistletoe is like a key that opens the door to Christmastime. When the green nests of the mistletoe with their mother-of-pearl berries are shining, high up in the crown of poplars or fruit trees in the pale winter sun, the plant appears for sale in the Advent-time markets. In England and in France, mistletoe is a popular Christmas decoration with a longer tradition even than the Christmas tree.2 In Germany and the United States, we bring mistletoe into the house and joyfully place it over a door. Why? We do it because mistletoe is decorative, traditional, and brings good luck—especially if a couple kisses while standing beneath the “kissing bough.” We somehow simply know about this from the past. But what lies behind this Christmas custom and its symbolism?

As we so often discover, the key to a better understanding of these old, almost subconscious rituals may be found in longstanding traditions of careful observation of nature. Our ancestors had plenty of time for that. Thus they discovered that the European mistletoe is strange in many ways. It does not grow on the earth, but instead sprouts in the crown of trees, especially poplar, apple, and pear trees, but also on firs and sometimes even on stone oaks (Steineiche).3 The mistletoe develops from all sides into a ball shape and keeps its leathery green leaves all year long. Its pearly white berries are slimy inside and emerge late, in November and December. In short, this plant “seems to have emancipated itself from the yearly rhythm of the sun” and behaves “as if the seasons did not concern it,” as the ethnobotanist Wolf-Dieter Storl aptly stated (Storl 2000b, 247). Today we have a scientific explanation for this botanical peculiarity. We now know that mistletoe is parasitic and takes water and mineral salts from its tree host. Thus its growth is not dependent on the process of photosynthesis or the energy of light.

Drastic love under the mistletoe. (“Vampire Santa” illustration by Michael Kanarek. Postcard © Rockshots, Inc. New York, 1980)

Our ancestors drew mythical and symbolic conclusions from their observations of nature and handed these down to us. The Celts, whose British descendants are responsible for enriched the ethnobotany of Christmas with mistletoe, associated the airy growth habit of the plant with the cosmic powers of heaven, especially when seen growing in an oak (which still very seldom happens). The Celts called the oak duir, “oak king.” It represented the solstice, the time of transition from one half of the year to the other. According to Pliny, mistletoe was the most important magical plant of the Celtic druids and served as a symbol for the winter solstice. The druids, like the popular Father Christmas, wore white robes and red cloaks. They cut mistletoe from the crowns of oaks with golden sickles and concocted magic potions with it (like Miraculix in the world-famous comic Asterix and Obelix).

The Celts believed that the slimy berries were drops of semen from the cosmic bull that impregnated the fecund goddess Earth, a horned god who symbolized the power of the divine lightning-thrower or thunder god. This explains the Celtic belief that putting mistletoe on the roof affords protection against thunder and lightning.

The Germanic god Donar gets his onomatopoeic name from the sound of thunder,4 and the legendary Hessian Donaroak5 has cultic meaning as a tree of life or world tree. Like the oak, mistletoe was dedicated to Donar, the rainmaking thunder god of vegetation (von Perger 1864, 65). In German, it was called thunder broom (Donnerbesen), which is echoed in the English thunder besom. The plant was demonized in early Christian times as hexennest (witch nest) or teufelbesen (devil’s broom). Nevertheless, the custom of putting up mistletoe at Christmastime persisted.

European mistletoe is distributed from Europe to Asia and northwest Africa but does not occur in Ireland, Iceland, or Scandinavia. This geographically limited distribution explains why mistletoe is portrayed in a Germanic myth as the arrow of death of the sun god Balder. The Germanic people living in Scandinavia had no idea what mistletoe looked like and thus had no knowledge of its “greening power.” Some authors write accurately of the non-Germanic origin of mistletoe.6 How mistletoe came to be included in the Poetic Edda7 (a compilation of ancient Norse mythology in verse) has not yet been adequately explained by folklorists, the science of comparative religions, or the mythology of science.

MAGICAL AND FOLK USE

The symbolism of the evergreen mistletoe, which bears its fruit in winter, is related to the importance of fertility in folk tradition. In the Swabian region of Germany, the people bound mistletoe to fruit trees during the winter in hopes of ensuring a good harvest of fruit (von Perger 1804, 229). In Austria, the people placed mistletoe in the bedroom to help encourage the conception of a child. In the French-speaking part of Switzerland, mistletoe in the bridal bouquet meant a good marriage. In Wales, folk healers made a remedy from dried mistletoe to prevent infertility (Seligmann 1996, 217). The familiar tradition that allows a boy to kiss any girl standing beneath the mistletoe further demonstrates the longstanding association of mistletoe with fertility.

Incense to Attract Good Influences†

1 part mistletoe leaves (Viscum album)

1 part male fern leaves (Dryopteris filixmas)

3 parts frankincense (olibanum, Boswellia sacra)

†Based on a recipe from Belledame 1990, 71.

Other customs portray the mistletoe as a key to vitality and good luck and a defense against bad influences. In Scandinavia, mistletoe branches were used as “wishing rods” or “spring roots” that were supposed to enable one to open treasure boxes. In many regions, mistletoe served as a protective barrier against witches and sorcerers.

WITCHES’ EXCURSIONS: BROOMSTICKS AND RODS

Witches’ broom: Branches of holy mistletoe resembling broomsticks were used to drive out witches.

PRAHN 1922, 147

The rod of St. Nicholas or Father Christmas is nothing other than the infamous witches’ broomstick, the basic vehicle for a shamanic or witch flight. Mistletoe was not only called “witches’-broom” in the vernacular, it was actually considered a vehicle for the witches’ flight. Mistletoe found growing in birches was seen as especially important for this purpose (Höfler 1990, 40). In pagan times, the birch broom was a ritual object used for cleaning in preparation for new beginnings. With it, one swept out impure spirits of house and yard. Spirits nesting in the body of a human being could be driven out with birch broom beatings.

Two well-known elements of the Christmas custom—helper Ruprecht’s rod and the chimney down which Father Christmas throws the presents—are also attributes of witches. “Most of the time a witch rides on a broom8 out of the chimney, and comes back the same way. If she is not back before the next morning’s bells, she will fall down the chimney” (Schöpf 2001, 169). “If you put a broomstick on the floor behind a door … a witch could not enter” (Hiller 1989, 125). And it is easy to associate the following belief with the concept of Father Christmas coming down the chimney: “Three brooms should be put in the chimney if you want visitors to come” (Hiller 1989, 29).

“Witches’-broom” is a folk name for a thick-branched growth of fungal origin that affects many different types of plants. In fir trees this abnormal phenomenon is called “fir cancer” and is caused by an infection with the fir broom rust fungus, Melampsorella caryophyllacearum.

Helper Ruprecht with his rod. The rod of St. Nicholas or Father Christmas is nothing other than the suspicious witches’ broomstick, the vehicle of the shamanic witch flight. (Feather drawing circa 1840, by Franz Graf von Pocci, 1807–1876)

A witches’-broom growth on a weeping birch (Betula pendula Roth., Betulaceae), a tree called witches’ birch in the vernacular. It is said that witches sit and dance on its hanging branches on witches’ nights. No wonder the fly agaric mushroom grows under these trees.

Birch-branch broomsticks. Birch branches served as both life rods and witches’ broomsticks—a sure sign of pagan nature worship. “The witches’ brooms that were made out of birch rods were used as offerings to cure boils in Higher Bavaria” (Aigremont 1987 I, 30).

In old Europe, “life rods” were made of branches from evergreen box tree, juniper, rosemary, and holly:

Not so long ago, in some parts of Schleswig-Holstein, children were still going house to house with their rods, threatening to strike the inhabitants and receiving hot buns and sweets as “protection payment.” … The rod, which has a life-affirming function in the Germanic peoples’ belief system, has been associated in the Christian value system with the opposite attributes. The rod made of brushwood in the hands of Father Christmas remains a sign of that (Rust 1983, 39).

Witches’-brooms

“The so-called witches’-brooms or thunder brooms are associated with thunder and lightning. They are nest-like, normally caused by a parasitical fungus proliferating on white firs, birches, and cherry trees. In earlier times, they were put on roofs to protect houses from lightning and fire. Just as these malignant plant growths were connected with the witch’s broomstick, the folk belief also makes an association with lightning: The ‘broom’ is a symbol of the lightning itself, purifying the air and sky. In combination with storm clouds, lightning very often resembles brooms brushing the sky. Sailors call the west wind ‘sky broom’” (Engel 1978, 60).

As many examples in folk literature show, the rod and the broomstick also have a close symbolic relationship to fertility rituals and protection magic. They were used to invoke life and to both inflict and ward off bad weather and bad luck.

The hazelnut was dedicated to Donar, the god of marital and animal fertility. The hazel rod was a very good rod of life, and with this symbol of the penis, women were beaten like animals or “nutted” so that they would become fertile… . Through old records, this erotic pagan custom has been proven to have been practiced all the way back to the eighth century. The wishing rod (penis), which was cut on St. John’s Day, is a hazel rod with a year-old shoot. This life rod became a wishing rod because it was also used to find hidden treasures. It could be given a human appearance by cutting the bottom into the shape of two legs (Aigremont 1987 I, 38).

Wild holly branch (Ilex aquifolium) in a Nordic forest.

Today in Nepal, one can still come face to face with the shamanic roots of the witches’ broomstick. The Kirati shaman Parvati Rai has informed us many times that when she is in trance, she sees witches riding on brooms through the air. Much to our amazement, she and other jhankris (shamans) told us that they know of a kind of witch Sabbath and that the bokshis (witches) ride on broomsticks. According to Parvati Rai:

Bokshis keep every kind of broom between their legs, but not the kucho broom. In blue moon nights they dance around the pipal tree and wish for power for their negative intentions. We jhankris also do that. Our brooms are made out of kucho from the holy amlisau grass. We ask for power to heal illnesses. This dance reminds us of the original quarrel between jhankris and bokshis, and of our duty to use our powers for positive purposes and the ever-changing game that is played between illness and health.

The jhankris use brooms to treat the ill. They whisper mantras (magic formulas and sayings), blow on the patients, and brush away strange beings, germs, and negative energies from their bodies. Shamans use the broomstick to heal, whereas witches use it to fly and to perform harmful magic. The tool is the same, but the means and intention of the user are different.

Holly: Frau Holle’s Holy Tree

Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly wears the crown!

ENGLISH CHRISTMAS SONG

Ilex aquifolium L., Aquifoliaceae (holly)9

OTHER NAMES

Agrifolio, alloro spinoso, aquifolio, aquifolius balme, bat’s wings, buk, Christdorn, Christ’s thorn, füe, gaispalme, holegen (Old Greek), holly, hollywood star, holm, holst, holy tree, hülse, hülsebusch, hülseholz, hulis (Old High German), hulm, hulst, hulver bush, hurlebusch, igelstechpalme, kolleno (Celtic), leidendorn, myrtendorn, palma, palmdorn, palmendistel, padnore, quacke, schradlbaum, schwabedorn, schwarze eiche, spiselhölzli, stächlaub, stechblacka, stechdorn, secheichen, stecholder, stechlaub, stechwiederl, tinne, wachslaub, walddistel, walddistelstrauch

With its shiny green, spiky leaves,10 and red berries, the holly tree in the snow looks like a Christmas tree decorated with red balls. In Scandinavia, celebrants put up holly for the jul feast, believing they will bring luck to the house. In England, holly is a popular Christmas decoration and often used for Christmas cards and wrapping paper. In German-speaking areas, holly is sold during winter in the form of potted plants and branches.