The Holly in Folklore

Holly was considered a protective force against evil. Many prickly or thorny species were considered protective due to the fact that it was believed that evil thought forms or spirits would be caught up in their branches or unable to pass through the tree.

At the Winter Solstice, and later on in time at Hogmanay people would decorate their homes with Holly branches to protect them from fairy mischief. It was considered OK to ask permission to take some cuttings from the tree as long as an offering of some sort was made (for example, leaving a piece of silver at the roots of the tree) but it was considered desperately unlucky to actually fell the tree.

People would also plant Holly around their homes where they would not only act as hedgerows but also protect the home and animals from ill luck or evil.

The Holly was also considered a powerful tree due to the fact that it was an evergreen and could withstand the onslaught of the cold winter months

The word Holly means holy. The Holly tree was considered sacred to the waxing year, or winter. He ruled in duality with the Oak tree, who ruled over the waning half of the year, or summer.

The Holly is also sacred in the Christian religion where the jagged leaves symbolise the crown of thorns that Jesus wore at his crucifixion and the berries his blood.

O READER! Hast thou ever stood to see
The Holly Tree?
The eye that contemplates it well perceives
Its glossy leaves
Order’d by an intelligence so wise,
As might confound the Atheist’s sophistries.

Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen
Wrinkled and keen;
No grazing cattle through their prickly round
Can reach to wound;
But as they grow where nothing is to fear,
Smooth and unarm’d the pointless leaves appear.

I love to view these things with curious eyes,
And moralize:
And in this wisdom of the Holly Tree
Can emblems see
Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme,
One which may profit in the after time.

Thus, though abroad perchance I may appear
Harsh and austere,
To those who on my leisure would intrude
Reserved and rude,
Gentle at home amid my friends I’d be
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.

And should my youth, as youth is apt I know,
Some harshness show,
All vain asperities I day by day
Would wear away,
Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.

And as when all the summer trees are seen
So bright and green,
The Holly leaves a sober hue display
Less bright than they,
But when the bare and wintry woods we see,
What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree?

So serious should my youth appear among
The thoughtless throng,
So would I seem amid the young and gay
More grave than they,
That in my age as cheerful I might be
As the green winter of the Holly Tree.