Читать книгу The Completely Useless Guide to Christmas - Martin Pullen - Страница 11
ОглавлениеHolly
The Romans were the first to bring holly into their homes, the spiky leaves hanging around the fireplace to offer protection from evil spirits entering through the chimney.
The tradition passed on to the Christian church, in time holly leaves coming to symbolise the crown of thorns worn by Jesus on the cross, with the red berries representing Christ’s blood.
Before turnips were introduced into Britain in the eighteenth century, the evergreen holly was grown to feed cattle and sheep during the winter months.
Aside from providing a hearty winter meal, the leaves of the Amazonian Ilex guayusa holly tree are used to make ayahuasca, a stimulating herbal tea.
If you care to relax over your afternoon tea with a game, the heavy, hard and whitish wood of the holly is traditionally used to make the white chess pieces, taking battle against their ebony opponents.
And, if you were to expire after the Christmas feast, holly provides the perfect wreath.
Ivy
Together with a concoction involving opium and wild lettuce, ivy features in one of the earliest recorded medical formulas for what was known as a ‘soporific sponge’. Used as early as the twelfth century as an anaesthetic, the sponge, soaked in the liquefied plant’s juices, would be placed over the patient’s nose and mouth, inducing up to four days of sleep.
In New Zealand, despite being the world’s largest exporter of lamb, the fluffy balls of wool-covered meat have never so much as seen a leaf of ivy. Not being native to the country, and with worries that, if introduced, it might spread like an out-of-control bushfire, ivy is banned, excepting, that is, in its depiction on Christmas cards.
Mistletoe
The Anglo-Saxons referred to mistletoe as ‘dung on a twig’. They had good reason: the mistle thrush feasts on mistletoe berries, then excretes the seeds in its droppings. Coated with a gluey substance called viscin, the seeds stick to the branches of trees, the viscin hardening. The mistletoe then grows from the bird’s droppings, using the faeces as food.
Left unchecked, the mistletoe saps the host tree of water and nutrients, reducing its growth and – with heavy infestation – eventually kills the tree.
With a particular liking for apple trees, and with apples increasingly imported from northern France, orchards in Britain’s ‘cider counties’ of Kent and Somerset are in decline, and British mistletoe, losing its host trees, is facing an uncertain future.
In 2011, the National Trust launched a campaign – fittingly called ‘Giving Mistletoe the Kiss of Life’ – to preserve British mistletoe. As part of the campaign, the Trust highlighted six different insects that rely on mistletoe for food…
…including the mistletoe marble moth…
…and the romantically-named ‘kiss-me-slow’ weevil.
According to custom, a young man has the privilege of kissing a girl under hanging mistletoe, although he must then remove a berry. When all the berries have been removed, the privilege ceases. Even if berries remain, the mistletoe must either be burned on the Twelfth Night or, some believe, fed to a cow.
If a man were to kiss under the mistletoe after the Twelfth Night, it’s said he won’t find love in the coming year.
Poinsettia
In December 1828, on a visit to the Mexican city of Taxco, Doctor Joel Roberts Poinsett, first US Minister to Mexico, discovered a large plant with flame-red, leaf-like bracts, growing by the side of the road. A keen botanist, Poinsett sent a cutting home to be planted in his greenhouse in Greenville, South Carolina.
Dismissed at first by fellow botanists as a weed, following successful cultivation over 65 million poinsettias are now sold each year in the US alone, one-third of annual flowering potted-plant sales.
But is it a pot plant? Left to grow wild, the poinsettia can reach a lofty four metres.
The chameleon of the plant world, in the long dark of the winter night the flame-red bracts change colour. But don’t sneak in with your torch to watch – unless it gets a full 12 hours of darkness, a poinsettia will be nothing but grumpy in the morning.
Native to Mexico and Central America, the poinsettia is known locally as Flor de Nochebuena, meaning ‘Christmas Eve flower’.
Christmas Rose
Story tells of a cold and wintry night, when the Wise Men of the East, on their way to Bethlehem bearing gifts for the newly born baby Jesus, came across a shepherdess by the name of Madelon. Poor Madelon, she was unable to afford – or even find – a small gift, not even a flower, to give the Holy Child! A tear began to run down her cheek. Seeing her weep, an angel swept away the snow to reveal a beautiful white flower: the Christmas rose.
Otherwise known as the Snow or Winter rose, the Christmas rose is often thought of as the true Christmas flower, blooming in the cold of winter in the mountainous Alpine regions of central Europe.
If you’re looking for a name at Christmas for your newborn baby girl, perhaps you should forget Holly and go for Madelon – the Christmas rose.
Christmas Cactus
Sounding not unlike a well-sprung mattress, the Schlumbergera is commonly referred to as the Christmas cactus, as – surprise, surprise – it blooms at Christmas. Well, not always: it has been known to flower as early as October, or as late as the following summer.
With a liking for the shade of trees or rocks in areas with high humidity, the Christmas cactus can be found growing wild in the coastal mountain rainforests of southeast Brazil, or in the greenhouse of your local garden centre. It’s best to visit near to Christmas Eve and seek out one already in bloom; otherwise, don’t hold your breath.
Glastonbury Thorn
Legend tells, after the death of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea travelled to Britain, bringing with him the Holy Grail. Intending to spread the message of Christianity, Joseph travelled to the West Country, to the town of Glastonbury, where, pushing his walking stick into the ground beside him, he lay down to sleep. Upon awakening, he found the stick had taken root, and begun to flower. Joseph left his walking stick in the ground and, from that day, the Glastonbury thorn – unlike the common single-flowering hawthorn tree – magically blossomed every winter and spring.
It is said that during the English Civil War of 1642–51 the original tree that grew from the walking stick of Joseph of Arimathea was cut down and destroyed by soldiers faithful to Oliver Cromwell; but not before secret cuttings had been taken and planted to grow further trees. One of the trees could be found, until its death in 1984, growing in the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey.
To this day, two other Glastonbury thorns grow in the grounds of the Church of St John the Baptist. From one of these ‘sacred thorns’, a flowering sprig is sent, every Christmas, to the British monarch, a tradition dating back to the early seventeenth century.
