A hang-up about Christmas: some let it fester

Usage examples of mistletoe.

It is the fruit of a mistletoe that loves only certain treesapple, alder, hazel, holly and willow, elder, oak, banksia and elm, birch and blackthorn.

Sculptured sprays and berries, with leaves of Mistletoe, fill the spandrils of the tomb of one of the Berkeleys in Bristol Cathedral--a very rare adornment, because for some unknown reason the parasite has been always excluded from the decorations of churches.

Clinging to the mast of this magic cherry tree was an abundance of equally inadmissible mistletoe, sacred since the dawn of time, when the Druids used to harvest it with silver sickles before going on to perform solstitial rites of memorable beastliness at megalithic sites all over Europe.

All over Erith, in hovels and bothies, in cottages and crofts, in marketplaces, smithies, and workshops, in barracks, taverns, malt-houses, and inns, in manor houses, stately homes, and Towers, in halls and keeps, castles and palaces, they set holly garlands on rooftrees, ivy festoons around inglenooks, sprays of mistletoe above the doors and strobiled wreaths of pine and fir and spruce on every available projection.

Butte yn ye season whenne ye mistletoe And holly hangeth hevye on ye bough, Ech wrytes to ech a lettere of gude cheere, To telle hys friende whatte hym befel thatte yeare.

He had holly and mistletoe flown in and kept in the refrigerator until it was time to put them up, and Alberta entered into the spirit of the season by scouring cookbooks for traditional Christmas recipes.

After distributing some little presents among them, we went to the church, which had been decorated with holly, pine, cassena, mistletoe, and the hanging moss, and had a very Christmas-like look.

Although there was a bunch of mistletoe over the table, it did not seem a bit Christmasy, but just an ordinary good dinner with much interesting talk.

Raoul Ritz opened the door for them, a sprig of mistletoe clipped to his porkpie hat.

Sculptured sprays and berries, with leaves of Mistletoe, fill the spandrils of the tomb of one of the Berkeleys in Bristol Cathedral--a very rare adornment, because for some unknown reason the parasite has been always excluded from the decorations of churches.

Had some impudent sprig of the squirarchy dared take advantage of the mistletoe to kiss her?

Grey bunches of mistletoe and festoons of trailing moss hung from its bark.

On leaving the church of Saint Fiacre in Horto after the papal blessing the happy pair were subjected to a playful crossfire of hazelnuts, beechmast, bayleaves, catkins of willow, ivytod, hollyberries, mistletoe sprigs and quicken shoots.

The gay decorations, the clump of ribbon-decked mistletoe suspended from the ceiling, and the gown of deep rose merino were bitterly anachronous.

And I go to gather cresses in the meadow, The green cress and the golden grasses, The golden moss that gives sleep, And the mistletoe high on the oak, the druids' bough That grows deep in the woods by the running water.