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Why we kiss under mistletoe Kissing under the mistletoe is thought to have evolved from the Roman winter solstice festival of Saturnalia and marriage rites. The plant was said to bestow the gift of fertility. In Scandinavia mistletoe was regarded as a plant of peace that would help enemies resolve their conflict or warring spouses kiss and settle their differences. Tradition also has it that mistletoe should be burned on the twelfth night in case all the boys and girls who have kissed under it never marry. Those who want to ensure they get the etiquette correct should remember that men are meant to pluck berries when they kiss a woman under mistletoe and once the last one is gone the frolics should stop.

Winter Solstice Means That Beyond Bare Branches Lies a World Waiting to Bloom The darkest day is the birthday of hope: For many thousands of years, that is what the winter solstice has meant to people all over the world. It is the shortest day of the year, when night has its greatest dominion. But it also is the day that light begins to grow, it has provided powerful metaphors of survival and rebirth to help us face the apparent death of the natural world and look on to the season of new growth to come.

Unlike ancient pagans, we have science to tell us that the solstice _ Dec. 22 in the Northern Hemisphere _ is simply the day when the Earth's axis tips us farthest from the sun, so the sun appears lowest and weakest in the sky and has the shortest arc. As the Earth tips back, the days will inevitably grow longer.

Knowing is one thing. Real comfort comes when we deck our houses with evergreens, light fires and candles, feast with our families to banish cold and dark, sing songs, worship together and tell sacred stories of hope and rebirth.

Pagan Roots Many of the customs we associate with Christmas have their roots in pagan winter solstice celebrations from northern Europe, where the longest darkness and deepest cold brought the greatest fear.

pre-Christian Scandinavia  a giant oak log was burned to symbolize strength and endurance, as the household gathered around the fire in the face of darkness. That image of the fire on the hearth still is central to our idea of Christmas. Traditionally the log that celebrated Yule _ a name probably derived from an old word for wheel, as the wheel of the year turned _ was big enough to light 12 days of feasting. A fragment would be saved to light next year's log, symbolizing continuity and rebirth.

In Celtic myth, the winter solstice was the time that the Oak King _ who had grown weaker through the fall, just as his sacred trees lost their leaves _ revived to do battle with his evergreen twin, the Holly King. Holly has long been associated with European midwinter celebrations, because it remains green and holds it berries at a time when so much of the forest is gray or brown and seems dead. Later, as a new metaphor arose for light and rebirth, the holly's berries, like those of mistletoe, came to be associated with the blood of Christ.

Northern European Evergreens, with their apparent ability to defy winter's death, long have been sacred . At the solstice, evergreens were decorated with offerings to beckon the return of the growing year. After the Middle Ages, the custom began to move indoors, and it entered American tradition after the German-born Prince Albert introduced the Christmas tree to England in 1841.

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Write the bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble. Arabic parable