HOLLY AND MISTLETOE. 81 



pagan Saturnalia. So long as gorse is in blossom, 

 it is true, — as the old proverb tells us, — then is 

 kissing still in fashion ; but under the mistletoe- 

 bough it is open to all, and none may pretend to 

 escape the light penalty. It is strange indeed to 

 fuid practices so opposed in their origin still 

 loitering on side by side ; for the practical modern 

 Christmas is, in fact, a conglomerate of many dis- 

 tinct forms of heathendom with a great religi )us 

 Christian festival. And yet, on the whole, no 

 happier combination of quaint old customs and 

 pleasant memories could easily be manufactured. 



The holly-tree itself, which supplies the red 

 berries so intimately bound up with the festivities 

 of the season, is a truly wild British evergreen 

 shrub, a native of all southern and central 

 Europe. Tliough we usually see it merely as a 

 small and somewhat stunted bush, planted in 

 thickest hedges, or quaintly clip[)ed in cottage 

 gardens with old-fashioned precision into prim 

 shapes of cones or pyramids, it will yet grow 

 under favorable circumstances into a tall and 

 handsome leafy tree, some forty feet in height, 

 wit'i a long, smooth, whitish trunk and a spread- 

 ing crest of rounded boughs and foliage. The 

 holm-bush, as our ancestors oftener called it, 

 tlirives especially on the cold damp clays of the 

 Surrey weald, where it gives its name to the well 

 known expanse of Iloluiwood Common, a wide 



