Holly - Deck the Halls

Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly, tra-la-la-la-la...

So goes the lovely old English Christmas carol; but holly is not a 'just for Christmas' tree. It is embedded in the English language in history and folklore. Even an English King, it is said, was moved by love to celebrate its qualities.

                                       As the holly groweth green

                                       And never changeth hue,

                                       So I am, and ever hath been

                                       Unto my lady true.

The puzzle is though, if Henry VIII DID write this, then to which of his wives?

 

 

European Holly. By Jürgen Howaldt - Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 2.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=389964</a

Felling a holly tree has always been considered to bring bad luck, although cutting for decoration is safe. It is of course at Christmas that holly is pre-eminent. It appears in wreaths, on cards, in decorations of every kind and some people still strew branches around the house. This is because Christians adopted holly as a symbol, representing the crown of thorns worn by Jesus and the red of course, for his blood.

How odd that a belief from hundreds of years ago, that we might dismiss as superstition, turns out to have a factual basis. Holly used to be planted near to houses to ward off lightning strikes. Science has shown that the spines of holly act as tiny electrical conductors.

Another myth, that certainly won't be verified, is that witches used, (inexplicably), to run along the tops of hedges and so holly was planted at intervals in a hedge to make this difficult!