The Holly and the Ivy: Christian and Pagan Mythology at Christmas
The comprehension of the bones
I love it when the American Holly tree (ilex opaca for you taxonomy nerds) begins putting out its berries. It’s one of my favorite marks of the seasons’ turning to winter, and the impending mystery of Christmas. Strange as it might seem, I like to celebrate this change by singing to these lovely trees as I walk around the fields near my home. My song of choice is a bit on the nose, but “The Holly and the Ivy” is a favorite carol, and one that I hope the hollies feel honored by.
On top of my seasonal love for the plant, I feel a deep connection to it because of my Gaelic roots. The name Leslie is a name that has long been passed down in my family, and the name’s Gaelic origin, leas celyn, means holly grove. Indeed, the holly tree was a sacred tree for the ancient Celts, whose language, Ogham, honors holly as the letter tinne (ᚈ), as noted by Dianne Beresford-Kroeger in her marvelous book To Speak for the Trees.
As I’ve spent more and more time with hollies in these various associations, I’ve become increasingly enchanted with them. They are mythical in the way they hold both Christian and pagan magic between their leaves, the way that they blend the ancient and the modern into a generative and regenerative mythopoetic fog.
As the tree builds these mythologies, it is fed in turn by the new mythologies we create. Such is the case in the medieval tale Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Arthurian world is rife with these foggy places between the Christian and the pagan, but the mascot of this liminal space is the Green Knight himself, Lord Bercilak. Here is how he appears at the Christmastide celebration in Camelot:
And in guise all of green the gear and the man:
A coat cut close, that clung to his sides,
And a mantle to match, made with a lining
Of furs cut and fitted– the fabric was noble…
And a few lines further:
And all his vesture was verdant green;
Both the bosses on his belt and other bright gems
That were richly ranged on his raiment noble
About himself and his saddle, set upon silk
That to tell half the trifles would tax my wits…
In one of his lectures, the British storyteller Martin Shaw pointed out that the Green Knight, adorned in his shaggy, wild green, and flecked with dots of bright color, is himself a holly tree. He shows up on Twelfth Night, the culminating day of Christmastide, but he baffles the Christians; he observes the Christian holiday, but he presents himself as something older and stranger. Bercilak is not anti-Christian, but pre-Christian.
In his re-telling of the old fairytale of Iron John, the poet Robert Bly says that there are seven seas, and that fairy-stories take place on the eighth sea. I’d venture that Christmas is a season that takes place on the eighth sea, in the swirling realm of myth, in the comprehension of the bones rather than the knowledge of the brain, in the brief seasonal trip where we flitter between the seen and unseen world, in the longest darkest nights of the year. The old stories, in Christmastide, bubble up the surface and intrude on our feasts, and the holly hanging above our doorways and fireplaces reminds us of that world full of magic and mystery, where redemption is possible.
Tolkien says of the faerie-world: “Faerie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold.” I think a sense of this mystery and danger around Christmas is deeply embedded in our imaginations. As my friend Josh pointed out to me recently, there’s a reason it was a Victorian tradition to tell ghost stories on Christmas Eve—and one of the most famous Christmas stories, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, is exactly that. Around Advent, the veil is thin, and though we have forgotten it in our brains, our bones know that Bercilak isn’t far, waiting to come out of the shadows and challenge our preconceptions, our rituals, and our pretendings at righteousness.
And so, as I hang up my holly this year in anticipation of the celebration of Christ’s incarnation, I’ll keep my eyes peeled. During this season of myth, angels come with messages of peace on earth and goodwill to men, and other strange beings come to remind us to tread carefully, lest we lose our heads.
Interested in learning more about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? Check out Christmas with the Green Knight, a new book by the Enthusiast’s own Alex Miller.
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