A countdown of fact and funny until the big man comes to town
Do you kiss under the mistletoe? Where does that tradition even come from? Funny you should ask – Washington Irving, in his 1820 collection of short stories and essays The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, was the first to describe the kissing custom.
The mistletoe is still hung up in farm-houses and kitchens at Christmas, and the young men have the privilege of kissing the girls under it, plucking each time a berry from the bush. When the berries are all plucked the privilege ceases.
But the custom itself seems to go back 13th century Scandanavia, when legend has it a Norse goddess made each and every plant and animal promise not to harm her son. When that plan didn’t pan out and her son was killed with a mistletoe spear, she declared the plant sacred. She ordered that from now on, the plant would bring love and not death.
