green acres lyrics: The holly & the ivy

"The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown
Of all the trees that are in the wood
The holly bears the crown
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir ..."
-- Traditional carol

Tradition is at the heart of the way we celebrate Christmas, taking us back to the fondly remembered days of childhood and the distant past of long ago and far away.

On the personal level, there are memories of Grandma's special cookies and the cherished Old Country customs she's handed on to her children's children. On the spiritual plane, we revisit the birth of an innocent babe in a small Middle Eastern village 2,000 years ago. And on the mythic canvas, there's dear old Santa in his North Pole workshop and hoary pagan rituals of forgotten origin that live on in our modern world.

Christmas is a tapestry, a thing woven of hope and wishes to kindle warmth in winter's darkest days.

Yule log in the hearth and a fir in the hall? The primitive Teutonic tribes of Germany did it first. Caught under the mistletoe by your least-favorite uncle? Blame it on the Celts, who associated mistletoe with fertility -- in polite company, we'd say romance. Holly and ivy, as celebrated in the centuries-old English carol? Well, there's a tale there, too.

Back to the past
For holly's role, we can start with the Romans, who used it liberally in their year-end festival of Saturnalia. This was a holiday co-opted by the early Christians as the birth of Christ (the true date being a mystery) and was known as the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun, referring to lengthening days that follow the winter solstice. The Romans decked their halls with boughs of holly long before anyone gave a fa-la-la and exchanged holly wreaths, a practice adopted by the early Christians.

In a culture at least as old, the Druids of England's primal forests revered the holly and considered it a gift from the gods. These nature-smitten tribes, the original tree-huggers, wore sprigs of holly in their hair for solstice rituals. Think of those sharp-edged leaves and be glad this custom has become passe.

Centuries later, European cultures would assign holly the power to banish witches and protect their homes from thunder and lightning (Donner and Blitzen in another Christmas tale). Brightly arrayed in red and green, the preferred Christmas palette, holly had fans long before our day.

Ivy, evergreen and pliant, was a symbol of eternal life among the northern pagans and the emblem of Bacchus, god of wine and revelry, in ancient Rome. Clearly, one group was focused on the sweet hereafter and the other on wild partying in the here and now, but the sacred and the secular camps still struggle over Christmas, don't they?

That battle goes on in the lyrics of "The Holly and the Ivy," which is thought to have pagan origins dating back more than 1,000 years. The version we know -- with the red berries and prickly leaves reconfigured as symbols of Christ's blood and thorny crown -- may have appeared as early as the 15th century, when holly and ivy were common church decorations at Christmas time.

The Christianized carol was first published in 1710 on the kind of broadsheets handed out in church. Nearly 200 years later, it was collected by British folk historian Cecil Sharp, who included it in a volume of carols and hymns he authored in 1911. But it was based on a much earlier song called "The Contest of the Holly and Ivy," which has nothing to do with salvation and piety.

Mentioned in a 1561 manuscript during King Henry IV's time, its lyrics relate the "contest" between the male holly, strong and sturdy, and the female ivy, a clinging vine. It's a sort of "Kiss Me Kate" battle for rule of the domestic roost and begins this way:

"Holly standeth in the hall, fair to behold
Ivy stands without the door; she is full sore a-cold
Nay, Ivy, nay, it shall not be I wis,
Let Holly have the mastery as the manner is ..."

Some think that what's referenced is the custom of using holly for interior decoration and ivy as an outdoor sign marking a vintner's shop -- echos of the Roman link to Bacchus, king of the grape. But it can't be all about proper decorating etiquette, can it?

To my mind, this is a classic tangle of Christmas themes, with pagan earthiness overlaid by Christian high-mindedness -- a rising solstice sun here, the holy mother and child there. It's all so wonderfully rich and resonant.

Out to the garden
Taking the plants in question outside, a gardener would say there's little contest between the two, since holly wins -- hands down.

Hollies are supremely useful broad-leafed evergreens with shapes, sizes and habits of growth to suit any purpose. There are prickly types and smooth-leafed kinds, soaring trees and rock garden specimens, small-leafed varieties resembling boxwood and species that atypically lose their leaves in winter. Showy berries can be red, orange, yellow and even ivory.

English ivy -- the common type -- is a take-over artist that can be invasive, clambering into trees and up house walls with aerial roots that stick like glue to any surface. It can damage walls that aren't of the firmly mortared stone or brick kind. (Boston "ivy," which put the ivy in Ivy League, is really Virginia creeper and in another genus entirely.)

British settlers found their beloved holly's American equivalent growing along the Eastern seaboard. Hardier than the English kind, it was less favored since its leaves were dull and its berries fewer. Before hybridization efforts began to improve native stocks, they were all but depleted by unregulated collection for holiday sales.

Here's where the story focuses more tightly on New Jersey. In 1926, Clarence Wolf, owner of a sand and gravel firm in Millville, planted a 55-acre holly orchard with trees transplanted from local swamps and forests. Dan Fenton took over in 1947 and, with plant breeder Elizabeth White, founded in Holly Society of America in Millville, the "Holly City."

Cuttings from the orchard were planted at Rutgers Garden in New Brunswick, which was the largest collection of American hollies for decades, until it was superseded by the Berheim Arboretum in Kentucky. Enter the unassuming and professiorial Elwin Orton, a Rutgers University researcher who has galvanized modern holly breeding since his arrival on campus in the 1960s.

Orton's first introduction in the 1970s, 'Jersey Princess,' was an upright, conical tree bred for darker leaf color and heavy berry set. Following it were 'Dan Fenton,' a profuse fruiter; "Jersey Gold,' with yellow berries; 'Jersey Knight,' a male pollinator; and an entire series of dwarf clones suitable for rock gardens ('Jersey Jewel,' 'Jersey Midget,' 'Jersey Sprite').

Orton has given the genus the better part of 40 years of close attention, making crosses with English, Japanese and Chinese species, and introducing some 30 new hybrids. Few individuals have played a more critical role in improving the hollies available in the trade, which today offers 1,000 cultivars of our native species. So, holly's modern story is New Jersey's story, too.

The subject of sex insinuates itself like an old refrain when it comes to holly culture. Most are dioecious, that is, divided into male and female forms. Only females produce berries, but they require a male nearby for good pollination when flowers of both genders bloom in May or June. The berries ripen as winter approaches, and once softened by freeze-and-thaw cycles, are eagerly taken by fruit-eating birds like robins and cedar waxwings.

English ivy can make an attractive, dense groundcover, but needs to be monitored closely so it doesn't throttle the shrubbery or escape into the wild, where it will smother everything in its path. The best way to handle it outdoors is in firmly defined beds or in containers, where it can be kept in confinement.

Tender ivies -- and there are lots of them that won't survive harsh New Jersey winters -- make lovely house plants. Variegated, with splashes of cream or gold, deeply lobed or reduced to delicate miniatures, their leaves add a welcome splash of color to interiors. They'll curl around your windows or obediently submit to topiary training.

Really, just reverse the whole drift of the centuries-old carol: Let the holly stand "without the door," where it will bear up beautifully in the cold, and bring the ivy into the hall, where you can keep an eye on its willful ways. That's my advice and I'm sticking to it.

Merry Christmas, one and all.


Source: nj.com