My family and I are planning to make our phone calls from Santa early this year. Our calls from Santa are always a special part of our family’s Christmas tradition. We like to follow our little traditions and I’d bet your family has some traditions of its own. Have you ever followed the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe? Mistletoe is a Christmas plant that we hang on a door and everyone below is supposed to kiss. It is considered rude and unlucky if you don’t. However, mistletoe was not always as popular as it is now. In fact, the very name surprises by being something that would inspire a kiss. Mistletoe actually means poop stick or poop twig.

Mistletoe does not grow in the ground. The mistletoe grows in the treetops. It spreads its roots under the bark of the trees and drinks all the nutrients that the tree has up there. The funny thing is, how does the mistletoe get to the sky and to the top of the trees? It doesn’t just grow out of nowhere. Mistletoe spreads like a virus and acts like a parasite. A bird will eat a mistletoe berry and then fly away. Later, when the bird is high in the sky, it will poop, and the poop will land on the tree. The poop acts as soil and mistletoe, which is actually called “Misteltan”, will grow out of the poop. When it first sprouts, it looks like a twig. The Anglo-Saxon word from which mistletoe comes is Mistel, which means poop, and tan, which means twig. The mistletoe is a twig of poop. The exact phrase would be, poop on a twig.

I bet you’re wondering why people kiss under the mistletoe. That’s a very interesting question. It comes from Norse mythology. Frigga was the Norse god of love and beauty and the mother of Baldur. When Baldur, the god of the sun and summer, was born, his mother asked all the animals and all the plants not to harm Baldur so that he would live forever and the son of summer would always come. The problem was that there was an angry and mischievous god named Loki and she didn’t like Baldur.

Loki knew that Frigga had asked all the plants not to hurt Baldur, but she had overlooked the mistletoe. So Baldur made an arrow out of the poison of the mistletoe and tricked one of Baldur’s friends, who was blind, into shooting the arrow and killing Baldur. Frigga was so sad because her son had died that she cried for three days. When Baldur died, she took the son of summer with him, and it was dark for three days. The world plunged into winter without the sun. Frigga asked all the animals and all the plants to bring back her son, but none of them could.

Frigga’s tears were so powerful that they spilled onto the earth and brought Baldur out of the grave. With Baldur’s new life, the sun returned and brought the summer world back to life. Frigga was so happy to have her child back that she declared the mistletoe sacred and that anyone who walks under it should kiss it from that day on. The world was happy to comply.

The one thing people forget about kissing under the mistletoe is that they should only kiss under the mistletoe with berries. When a boy and a girl meet under the mistletoe, they kiss, and then the boy plucks a berry. When there are no more berries on the mistletoe, the kissing rights are gone.