78 HOLLY AND MUSTLETOE. 



boiiglis by cunningly inserted wires but a poor 

 substitute for tlie genuine old-fasliioned ])ictorial 

 associations of the crinkly holly-leaf and the 

 pallid mistletoe. 



The use of holly-berries for mid-winter decora- 

 tion runs back, like so many other festive prac- 

 tices, to a positively immemorial and unknown 

 antiquity. Long before Christmas as a Christian 

 holiday existed at all, the Christmas decorations 

 were hung up during the December feast-time in 

 many an early British and Continental household. 

 Everywhere indeed the idea of keeping high 

 festival about the winter solstice has naturally 

 suggested itself, quite apart fi-om the circum- 

 stances of particular religions and races, to every 

 branch of the human family. To say the truth, 

 Christmas itself is not theoretically the chief holi- 

 day of the Christian year ; that honor has 

 always been accorded by ecclesiastical writers to 

 Easter Day, the festival of the Resurrection, as 

 the twenty-fifth of December is of the Nativity. 

 But in practical popular estimation, especially 

 among the little ones, Christmas holds undoubt- 

 edly the first place on the entire roll of the year's 

 liolidays. And it does so not so much because it 

 is the feast of the Nativity as because it is the 

 festival which happens to fall nearest to the mid- 

 winter solstice. There is something very natural 

 in the practice of keeping holiday in the depth of 



