Christmas Traditions

Today's Mono Monday theme hosted by Carolina is Christmas and locality.  Well in the UK we're quite keen on house decorations which often includes mistletoe.  The roots (excuse the pun) of the love of mistletoe goes back a fair way, and have nothing to do with Christmas.  The Celtic Druids valued mistletoe for its healing properties and were probably the first people to use it as a decoration.  Another use of the plant was by the ancient Greeks who possibly introduced the idea of kissing under it as part of their festival during the winter holiday of Kronia.  On a darker side, in Norse mythology the god Balder is killed by his blind brother Hoor using a mistletoe projectile!

It's wonderful what you can find on the Internet. 

Anyway the mistletoe at this grocer's shop appears to be selling well.  Where we used to live in Stratford many of the trees we could see from our windows, including our own Silver Birch were heavy with mistletoe at this time of year