There has been a bumper crop of mistletoe.
Unlike the plastic versions, romantics in the U.K. revel in the opportunity to hang real mistletoe above a doorway or arch, ready and waiting to steal a kiss. And if the mistletoe comes complete with ripe sticky white berries, even better. There's luck in a lass eating one.
Traditionally, a man should remove a berry while kissing a woman. When there are no more, kissing should stop.
This year's crop is reportedly especially lush with berries -- credited to a mild winter last year, when the flowers were being fertilized on the female plants, harvesters say.
"With so many berries this year it should certainly be a good Christmas for kissing," Jonathan Briggs, who runs Mistletoe Matters in Gloucestershire, said in The Observer, a London newspaper.
Prices are also expected to be cheaper due to the abundance.
A spiky parasitic plant, mistletoe grows mainly on apple, poplar and lime trees and is harvested in the U.K. mainly in the Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire areas.
Regarded as delivering the kiss of death when attached to other plants, it sprouts in the wild from seeds left in the droppings of birds who eat the berries.
Indeed, that is the root of the plant's name, arising from an ancient belief that "that life could spring spontaneously from dung," according to the Flower Shop network's website. Mistel is the Anglo-Saxon word for dung, and "tan," the word for twig, became toe. Bluntly put, mistletoe was translated as "dung-on-a-twig." How romantic!
The lure of mistletoe began in Scandinavia, where the plant represents peace and harmony. Before Christianity, its berries were thought to be a symbol of fertility.
Following ancient pagan customs, hugging or kissing under mistletoe began with the Roman festival of Saturnalia, to celebrate forgiveness of bad feelings over the previous year.
In medieval times, parents would hang a sprig above a baby's cradle, believing it had a magic charm that would prevent the infant being exchanged for a fairy "changeling" by evil pixies. Later, as a symbol of romance, a girl who refused a kiss under mistletoe was said to be doomed never to marry.
