Deck the halls!

Celebrated in the loveliest of carols, holly warms hearts anew each winter, but there's more to the spiky gem than merely Christmas cheer

- Deborah Nicholls-Lee

O READER! hast thou ever stood to see/The Holly-tree?' asked the Romantic poet Robert Southey in his 1809 poem The Holly-tree, observing 'with curious eyes' its 'glossy leaves', 'wisdom' and 'fadeless hues'. With its poisonous fruit and spiky leaves, holly puts on a show of hostility—but, like Southey, we have nevertheless taken it to our hearts, especially in December when its crimson berries and waxy foliage, robust enough to outwit Jack Frost, add welcome cheer to winter's stripped-back landscape.

'Holly is of course the special tree of the season,' reads Cassell’s Household Guide of about 1880. 'Let it be conspicuous throughout the decorations.' We've stayed true to the book’s advice, 140 years later, by bringing holly into our homes and hanging it over our hearths or weaving it into festive wreaths.

Although holly may be a familiar sight, it commands a certain reverence. 'Of all the trees that are in the wood,' pronounces the early-19th-century carol The Holly and the Ivy, 'the holly bears the crown.' Such royal pretensions can be traced back to the Celts, who personified winter in the figure of a hoary Holly King wearing a prodigious crown of holly. The winter solstice, shortly before Christmas, sees the Holly King at the peak of his powers before he wanes in readiness for his brother, the Oak King, who heralds summer, to resume control in the spring.