362 SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



of December, and so it was easy to postpone his festivities 

 to three weeks later. 



Mistletoe is not a Christmas decoration. It comes 

 to us from the Druids, and belongs to the New Year. It 

 is not allowed to appear in church, and should not be 

 hung up in private houses till Christmas is over and the 

 New Year has come. The hanging up of the mistletoe 

 is in itself a beautiful survival of an ancient worship, and 

 should be associated in our minds with Stonehenge and 

 the prehistoric star temples, whose priests were astro- 

 nomers. On New Year's Day they solemnly distributed 

 branches of the mistletoe to the people as a charm 

 ensuring fertility. In December there are many hundred- 

 weight of mistletoe cut down and despatched from the 

 ancient Druidical haunts of the Welsh border, and from 

 over-sea Brittany, to all-devouring London, where it is 

 heedlessly nailed up in doorways, and made the excuse 

 for much giggling and embracing. May those who read 

 these lines treat it with due reverence, and when they 

 kiss beneath the beautiful strange branch with its white 

 berries, think of our ancestors the noble youths and 

 lovely maidens of prehistoric days, who kissed three 

 thousand years ago, and sent this living token of their 

 happy lives down the long ages to us, distracted hustlers 

 of the motor-car. Prehistoric feeding may not be good 

 for us, but the prehistoric rite of the mistletoe must not 

 be neglected in these days of strange political aspirations 

 on the part of those who have not discovered its sedative 

 virtue. 



