HOLLY AND MISTLETOE. 77 



picture Christmas especially called up in tlieir 

 eager little niinds, tliey would answer, we fancy, 

 in unanimous chorus, "A big plum-pudding all on 

 fire, with a s[)rig of holly-berries stuck in the very 

 middle." Mistletoe and hollv indeed, thoucch 

 both of them owe their connection with the great 

 mid-winter feast to a pagan origin, have wound 

 themselves so closely round the very core of the 

 chief Christian English festival that we can 

 hardly think of Christinas without instinctively 

 thinking at the same time of those two familiar 

 Christmas decorations. When circumstances lead 

 an Englishman to spend the day of the Nativity 

 in distant lands, there is nothing that he misses 

 more or regrets more deeply than the mingled 

 white and scarlet berries of our British Christmas- 

 tide. It is all very well cooking a festive turkey 

 on the sweltering plains of Jamaica and Trinidad, 

 or making believe with i)lum-pudding and mince- 

 j)ies in the mid-summer heat of an Australian 

 December ; the travelling Britisher turns back 

 his inner gaze with longing glance upon the flesh- 

 jjots of Leadenhall Market, and misses among the 

 gorgeous tropical exotics the mistletoe and holly 

 of Covent Garden. Even in Canada, where snow 

 without and roaring logs within seem to recall 

 more vividly the English Christmas of the Tudor 

 period, the visitor from the mother-country finds 

 the green hemlock with oranges hung upon its 



