Christmas: The fascinating story of how holly and ivy became symbols

THERE’S no doubting the link between holly and ivy and Christmas celebrations, but have you ever thought why this should be so? The answer can be found two millennia ago with the Roman Empire’s Saturnalia celebrations – a significant influence on Christmas. 

Holly and ivy feature in English poetry, prose and music pre-dating modern science, but revealing enlightening facts about the plants. You can learn much about the basic biology of native trees and shrubs from reading, reciting and singing their works. Holly and ivy are no exception and good examples because of their strong association with mid-winter festivals.
Secrets surrounding holly are revealed in the modern version of an ancient Christmas carol first published by Cecil James Sharp (1859–1924), the famous collector of English folk songs and dances, having been given the material by a woman from Chipping Camden in Gloucestershire. 

The holly and the ivy when they are both full grown,
Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown.

If left alone, holly trees will mature into handsome pyramidal canopies. Not large, compared to other native woodland trees like oak, ash and beech, but substantial nevertheless, reaching 15 m with ease. George Simonds Boulger (circa 1900) describes an 80-foot (24 m) tree at Claremont as one of the tallest in the land, possibly a relic of the primeval forest of North Surrey. Holly’s traditional value was as a barrier species for fencing livestock, Yuletide/Christmas decoration and livestock feed. This left many ancient trees as stunted bushes in hedgerows or as pollards, displaying considerable girth but relatively little height.

The holly bears a prickle as sharp as any thorn.

A close-up view of holly reveals a formidable tree, dangerous to the touch. Tough, leathery dark-green leaves have sinew-like veins that extend into viscous bony-looking spines and present a real challenge to most browsing animals.

Holly and ivy were welcomed with open arms by the Christian church, although mistletoe never got past the lychgate. Lychgates like this one are traditionally made from oak, which ancient folklore says was a classic host tree for mistletoe. (Image: FJ)

When viewed against the light from street lamps on dark winter nights, leaf veins stand out like the fingers of ghostly hands on X-ray film.

The holly bears a blossom as white as lily flower.

Holly is so admired for its bright red berries that most people overlook its scented snow-white flowers in spring. Some can be confused when holly trees covered in flowers year after year fail to produce a single red berry for Christmas. The answer lies in the differentiation of the sexes. 
All flowers are waxy white and characterised as a symmetrical cross formed by four white petals at right angles, but that is where any similarity ends. The central rounded ‘body’ in the male flower is rudimentary but emerging from beneath are robust stamens comprising anthers borne on filaments and bursting with pollen. Female flowers have an enlarged central body representing the ovary with its ovules and a pollen-receptive stigma supported on a style, but with rudimentary stamens. 

The holly bears a berry as red as any blood.

From these female flowers develop tightly borne clusters of initially green berries ripening into the red berries of traditional wild Ilex, but sometimes staying orange, yellow or even becoming black when ripe. In structure, holly berries are the equivalent of plums and cherries, called drupes, but instead of a single seed there are two or more bony little stones, each containing a seed. People rely on holly to bear good crops of berries for festivity, but for animals holly berries may be the difference between life and death. 

The holly bears a bark as bitter as any gall.

Holly berries are part and parcel of nature’s well-organised winter food supply for birds and animals, with berries on various trees and shrubs becoming suitable as food in sequence through autumn, winter and into spring. They do not become palatable for fruit-eating birds until well after Christmas due to extreme bitterness of the red though still unripe fruit. Without this bitterness, holly may never have featured in Christmas celebrations because birds would have gorged on the berries before 25 December. According to the Christmas carol, other parts of the tree, including the bark, may carry the same bitter taste.

RELIGION AND FOLKLORE

Common ivy does not start to flower until September. (Image: FJ)

Community friendly and celebratory are the twin central themes for the English holly tree, rooted in ancient European tribal cultures. Holly’s form appears to have been crucial to its acceptance within the Christian religion. Less appreciated are aspects which celebrate age-old perceived differences between men and women.

For Teutonic and Anglo Saxon tribes, the waxy green leaves of the holly tree shining in the winter’s sun would have symbolised continuing life in the dead of winter and held magical fascination. These communities offered the ‘lubber fiend’ and other woodland spirits the warm sheltering boughs of holly around the ‘inglenook’ (corner beside an open fireplace) when their normal haunts in the wood were devoid of leaves. The legend lived on in the work of writers and poets, especially in the north of England, like Ammon Wrigley of Saddleworth (Lancashire moors).

O warm is the ingle nook.
From ‘A December Night’ by Ammon Wrigley (1861–1946)

Through the ages, glossy green leaves glowing in the winter sun were considered one of the pleasures of forest life, clear to see in William Shakespeare’s lyrics.

Heigh-ho! The green holly!
This life is most jolly.

Likewise, holly has always been regarded as a ‘good omen’ tree, keeping witches at bay and diverting both thunder and lightning, planted around the home and hung at the door for protection. 

Yet go, and while the holly boughs
Entwine the cold baptismal font,
Make one more wreath for use and wont
That guard the portals of the house.
From ‘In Memoriam A.H.H’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)

Romans were hot on holly too, but for different reasons.  A profuse harvest of scarlet berries in December was the perfect background decoration for the mid-winter Roman festival of Saturnalia, an ancient agricultural celebration of the melancholy god Saturn, held during the gloomy reign of winter. This was the time for jest and jollity and to bring back memories of summer flowers. Saturnalia was all about fecundity and bunches of red holly berries symbolised male virility. 

Observers are so fixated on the bright red holly berries that they often miss the sweet-smelling white flowers in April. (Image: FJ)

Roman interest in ivy, meanwhile, was related to sobriety and good order. Ivy vines woven into wreaths were not for fastening to the door, but to be worn as a crown on the heads of party-goers partaking of the fermented fruit of another climbing plant – Vitis, the grape vine. Romans believed ivy prevented drunkenness and fostered soberness and that is why old paintings and carvings always depict Roman senators sporting wreaths of ivy. Such was the perceived power of ivy over the effect of alcohol that wine goblets in taverns in the Middle Ages were carved from ivy wood, a very appropriate use during the festive season. Ivy clearly contains some very powerful chemicals, including those which emit a powerful scent from its flowers in October and enough to bring even the worst drunk to his senses.

Druids revered holly and wore sprigs in their hair as they watched priests cut mistletoe from oak trees with golden sickles. As Christianity took over from the old religions and the church absorbed the pagan festivals of Saturnalia and Winter Solstice, holly took on a whole new meaning. Early Christians still decked their houses with holly to avoid Roman persecution, but then absorbed it into their own celebrations. 

Perhaps early Christians saw things in holly that were too symbolically close to their own religion to let go. Leaf spines, as sharp as any thorn, evoked memories of the infamous ‘crown of thorns’, scarlet red berries symbolic of drops of Christ’s blood and the tough shiny and evergreen leaves demonstrating immortality.

As far as the church was concerned, the holly tree became the ‘holy’ tree. Like many other plants and shrubs, holly leaves and berries appear frequently in carvings on ancient stone masonry and wood inside the church, as do leaves and berries of the ivy plant. In spite of their close association with pagan worship, these two classic Druidic plants have been the mainstay of church decoration at Christmas since the 15th century at least.  

Holly has always been regarded as a brave tree as well as good tree, withstanding frost and snow in winter with warmth of its red berries. Mistletoe, on the other hand, appears to have been too closely associated with perceived sinister aspects of the Druids and was thus too much for the church to stomach. Mistletoe never gets nearer to the altar than when it hangs over the Lychgate, a four-posted and covered open-gate leading into the churchyard. Ironically, the Lychgate is traditionally crafted from English oak, claimed as one of the favourite hosts of the semi-parasitic mistletoe. 

Though apparently more appropriate to Easter than Christmas, these were the beginnings for holly (and ivy) in the perennially popular and traditional Christmas wreath and decorations around the fireplace. Be that as it may, the Christmas wreath of holly on the front door and the holly-decorated fireplace still had roots stretching back to pagan fears, admirably encapsulated by Tennyson with his ability to seize on the moment.

With trembling fingers did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
A rainy cloud possess’d the earth
And sadly fell our Christmas-eve.
From ‘In Memoriam’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Christian society clearly still had some reservation about taking holly, the one-time pagan plant, on board. There was a superstition prevalent in Rutland that bad luck would come if holly was brought into the home before Christmas Eve, or remained there beyond the Eve of Epiphany, the 12th night after Christmas (5 January).

Biologically, holly is one of very few native British trees to bear male and female flowers on separate trees, but history and folklore have taken the ‘battle of the sexes’ in other directions. Everyone knows (often to their cost) that holly leaves have sharp spines. But climb a tall holly tree (if you dare) and you will be pleasantly surprised. Once the holly tree reaches 3 m or more its leaves are shorn of spines. 

Hedgerow holly trees are commonly pollards, having been cut for foliage over the years, but according to folklore are rarely felled. (Image: FJ)

Evolution is the most common argument tendered for this changing vertical profile. Spineless leaves are palatable browse for cattle and other livestock, but to develop spines on leaves well out of reach of farm animals is a waste of plant resources. Deer are said to be the exception and will happily browse on holly leaves with or without spines.

These marked differences in leaves have been given a sexual dimension. In Derbyshire, spiny leaf branches were called ‘he-holly’ and spineless leaf branches ‘she-holly’. 

Legend says that if ‘she-holly’ was first brought into the home on Christmas Eve, then the ‘lady of the house’ will ‘rule the roost’ during the year and vice versa.

The many threads that run through holly in history, culture, folklore and religion can be picked up by reading what G.S. Boulger (circa 1900) calls a ‘curious carol’, comparing holly and ivy in ‘Olde English’ script. This ancient carol is called ‘The Contest of the Ivy and the Holly’ and is said to date from the year 1456. It was preserved among the Harleian manuscripts and is apparently ancestor of the more contemporary carol ‘The Holly and the Ivy’.
                               
Holy stond in the halle, fayre to behold;
Ivy stood without the dore: sheys full sore a-cold
Holy and hys mery men they dawsyn and they syng,
Ivy and hur maydenys they wpyn and they wryng.

These and other verses paint holly as a ‘jolly’ male plant and ivy as a ‘sad’ ‘female’ plant, while the chorus repeatedly emphasises well-established medieval attitudes relating to male supremacy.
                                            
‘Nay, ivy, nay it shall not be I wis,
Let holly have the mastery, as the manner is.
  
Other verses emphasise differences using berry colour and introduce the reliance of wild animals (in this case deer) on the fruits of the holly tree. That said, the role of the ‘oule’ (Middle English for owl), normally a carnivore, is less clear.

HOLLY VERSUS IVY

Common ivy will climb all manner of trees, like the common lime shown here, but you will never find it on a holly tree. (Image: FJ)

The contrasting colours of bright red holly berries and dull blue-black ivy berries clearly play in holly’s favour, but with regard to wildlife, ivy berries are certainly more important. Ivy does not flower until September and berries are not mature until February or even March. 

As such ivy berries are nature’s famine reserve, there for the final taking in late winter/early spring when all else has gone. The dull, blue-black colouration makes it more difficult for the birds to find them until they are starving.

Holly was clearly regarded as the master and ivy the servant, but you don’t have to wade through ancient English writings to know why. Just walk through the wonderland of winter woodland and see the ivy climbing oak, ash, lime and even the evergreen Scots pine. But you won’t see ivy climbing up the holly trees.