Kissing under the mistletoe is one of the most popular but least understood Christmas traditions. The practice dates back thousands of years, but few people can explain the connection between love, the holidays and this particular plant. As it turns out, kissing at Christmas is only a tiny part of mistletoe’s incredibly ancient – and incredibly fascinating – story. Mistletoe was woven into the fabric of prehistoric life. If you look closely enough, you’ll find that the tiny little plant played a central role in many of the most important myths of the Western world. Since the dawn of time, people have believed that mistletoe holds unimaginable power over life and death and is capable of healing almost any ailment. This a tiny book about a tiny plant, but in the pages that follow you’ll find answers – or at the very least, educated guesses – to all of these questions. But be warned: for every answer given, two more questions arise that defy solution. The truth is that even after thousands of years, the complete story of mistletoe remains shrouded in mystery. But we can do our best to fill in the blanks and reclaim much of its history from forgotten religions, dusty libraries and fading memories. It’s a millennia-long journey that will take us from sacred oak groves in Europe to Victorian parlors in London by way of Greece, Rome, Cambodia and Scandinavia. Along the way we’ll meet pagans, Christians, sun-worshipers and modern-day medical researchers. They all play a part in the incredible story of mistletoe.