The Mistletoe Kiss Myth

The usual Christmas explainer says the mistletoe kiss comes from a Norse myth in which the goddess Frigg brings her son back to life and promises a kiss to anyone under the plant. In the 13th-century Icelandic account, the mistletoe is the dart that kills Baldr, and he stays dead.

The story as it is told

The Norse gods loved Baldr, the son of the goddess Frigg. He was killed by an arrow of mistletoe.

Frigg wept, and her tears turned into the plant's white berries, and the berries brought her son back to life. Overjoyed, she blessed the plant that had caused so much grief and promised a kiss to everyone who passed beneath it. That, say the Christmas explainers, is why we kiss under the mistletoe.

What we can confirm

The tears-to-berries version appears in explainers such as The Week (2020): "She wept tears of white berries, which brought Balder back to life... promised a kiss to all who passed underneath it." History.com gives a "sunnier version" in which the gods resurrect Baldur and Frigg "declared mistletoe a symbol of love."

What the Norse source actually says. The fullest telling is in Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda), Gylfaginning ch. 49 (ch. 50 in Anderson's numbering). Frigg takes an oath from "fire, water, iron and all kinds of metal, stones, earth, trees, sicknesses, beasts, birds and creeping things" not to hurt Baldr. Loki, disguised as a woman, learns that "West of Valhal there grows a little shrub that is called the mistletoe, that seemed to me too young to exact an oath from." Loki pulls it up and guides the blind god Hoder: "Hoder took the mistletoe and shot at Balder under the guidance of Loke. The dart pierced him and he fell dead to the ground. This is the greatest misfortune that has ever happened to gods and men." (Anderson's translation.)

He doesn't come back. Hel agrees to release Baldr only if everything in the world weeps for him. One giantess, Thok, refuses: "Thok will weep / With dry tears... Let Hel keep what she has!" Snorri adds that "It is generally believed that this Thok was Loke." Snorri's account has no berries made of tears, no resurrection and no kiss. Saxo Grammaticus's Danish version (about 1200) has Balder killed by a sword, not mistletoe.

Where the "magic mistletoe" idea really comes from. The ancient sacred-mistletoe text is Roman. Pliny the Elder (Natural History 16.249 to 251, 1st century AD) says the Gallic Druids hold nothing more sacred than mistletoe and the oak it grows on. A white-robed priest climbs the tree and "falce aurea demetit" (cuts it with a golden sickle), and two white bulls are sacrificed. They call it by a word meaning "all-healing" ("omnia sanantem"), and they believe that "fecunditatem eo poto dari cuicumque animalium sterili" (taken in a drink, it makes any barren animal fertile). Pliny's verdict: "tanta gentium in rebus frivolis plerumque religio est" (such is the religious awe many peoples have for trifles). Our translations; Pliny says nothing about kissing.

The Victorian link. In The Golden Bough (abridged edition, preface dated June 1922), James George Frazer gave a whole chapter to "Balder and the Mistletoe". He argued that "Balder's life was in the mistletoe", tying the Norse myth to the Druid rite and to European fire festivals. That theory is now treated as a period piece, but it helped make Baldr and mistletoe a famous pair. The 1922 abridgment, searched for "kiss", has no mistletoe kissing at all.

The kiss is English and modern. The earliest printed reference usually cited is a 1784 song ("And kiss beneath the mistletoe, / The girl not turn'd of twenty"), reported by Time and repeated by The Week. Thomas Rowlandson's hand-coloured etching Christmas Gambols (published Nov 30, 1812) shows a servants' kitchen with a bunch of mistletoe hanging from the ceiling and couples kissing beneath it. Washington Irving, in the "Christmas Eve" sketch of The Sketch Book (1819 to 1820), describes "the mistletoe with its white berries hung up, to the imminent peril of all the pretty housemaids". His footnote is the earliest rule set opened here: "the young men have the privilege of kissing the girls under it, plucking each time a berry from the bush. When the berries are all plucked the privilege ceases." In Pickwick Papers (1836 to 1837), ch. 28, old Wardle hangs "a huge branch of mistletoe" in the kitchen, and the young ladies, after screaming and struggling, "submitted to be kissed with a good grace."

The modern story. Mark Forsyth, author of A Christmas Cornucopia (2016), "has found no evidence that the story of Frigga ends with kissing, or that it is linked to Christmas" (as summarized by The Week). The tears-to-berries ending first appears somewhere between Frazer's era and today; its first appearance hasn't been traced (see Open questions).

The facts

• Snorri's Edda: mistletoe is the one thing Frigg didn't put under oath; Hoder kills Baldr with it under Loki's guidance (Anderson tr.)
• Baldr stays in Hel because Thok refuses to weep
• Pliny NH 16.249 to 251: Druids, golden sickle, white bulls, "omnia sanantem", fertility drink
• Rowlandson, Christmas Gambols, Nov 30, 1812, shows kissing under hanging mistletoe (Met 59.533.1478, viewed)
• Marcus Ward & Co. card, "A Merrie Christmasse under the Mistletoe", chromolithograph, 1880. The Met, Gift of Mrs. Richard Riddell, 1981, acc. 1981.1136.837 (the Met catalogs it as "Valentine"). Item: metmuseum.org Rights: Met Open Access, isPublicDomain: true (CC0). Viewed: a couple in mock-medieval dress under a sprig of mistletoe, with the title lettered at the top. It's family-safe and works as a thumbnail. Caption: "A Victorian Christmas card shows the custom in fancy dress, 1880." Credit: "Marcus Ward & Co., 1880. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Richard Riddell, 1981 (CC0)."
• Irving's footnote on the berry-per-kiss rule (Sketch Book, "Christmas Eve")
• Dickens, Pickwick Papers ch. 28 mistletoe scene
• Frazer (1922 abridgment) ties Baldr to mistletoe but never to kissing

Related: What enters the public domain in 2027

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