#mistletoe way

[anonimusunnoan]

✨🩷Every ❄️snowflake's❄️ different ❄️just ❄️like ❄️you!🩷✨

[emry-stars-art]

Also it’s still St. Paddy’s where I am so the Irishman himself ☘️

[paper-lilypie]

merry christmas

[hampink]

merry (late) yaoimas!

[jazzzzzzhands]

Sticky note doodling when I'm supposed to be working.... Again..

SIGH

[clanima]

❤️💚Last day of reguri week: Under the mistletoe!❤️💚

I had so much fun drawing this and I enjoyed every piece of art and fanfiction I read these last few days.

Such a happy community.

Happy holidays everybody🥰 May the spirit of Reguri bless y'all😍🙏🏻💕

[nightjars-nest-art]

<3

[rocksanddeadflowers]

I realize I probably haven't said this on here before so- ya know the second missile that killed Baldur in TBI? Missile two? I've always pictured it with the actual plant mistletoe painted onto the missile for symbolism. Like aside from the obvious of mistletoe killing Baldur in the actual myths we have, mistletoe was already an important plant to the Nordic pagans if I'm not mistaken? Firstly they saw it as magical and powerful, being green and healthy even in the winter when the trees browned and went dormant. Plus they saw it as symbolic for love and peace in a way? I've heard before that enemies of battle would have a truce if they met underneath the mistletoe (not certain how true that is but it could be the origins of the kissing tradition?). Either way, mistletoe was important to them and see as a powerful and peaceful symbol.

So I just think it'd be neat for the "terrorist" group rebelling against tyrannical rule to put a symbol of peace and love on a weapon aimed not directly to kill (despite killing in crossfire) but aimed to destroy the tracks which were built to further said tyranny. It'd be symbolic to old nordic pagan beliefs, and be good narrative irony.

[be-an-echo]

under the mistletoe

[be-the-glenn-to-my-maggie]

Happy end of the holiday season, here is the Spider Hallmark Christmas Movie. Sorry it ended up way more serious than I meant for it too, it was supposed to be silly and fluffy. I will take criticism to make it fluffy:

-Spider used to live with his foster family next to the Sully's. The MsCoskers weren't great to him, and definitely never saw him as one of their own, but things were good. They never really cared where he was, and he spent all his time in the woods with the Sully kids, climbing trees and building treehouses and pretending to be forest people. He would help Kiri rescue baby birds that had fallen out of nests, and race Lo'ak up the tallest trees they could find until the branches get thin and breakable. Sometimes he would just sit and talk with Neteyam, about anything and everything. Neteyam always insisted on being the king of the forest, meaning Kiri and Lo'ak were the prince and the princess, but Spider was never quite sure what he was in the kingdom.

-He's been gone for a long time, after his dad got out of prison and got custody of him and took him far away to some military base out of the country. It wasn't good, and now that his dad is back in prison Spider has one year left before he turns eighteen and he's not quite sure where he'll end up. But, it's December and he's back and he's meeting his new foster family out in god knows where and through some insane fucked up version of fate it's the Sully's.

-They bring him to a new, smaller home than he grew up in, this one by the ocean and closer to other homes than the big forest properties from their childhood. But it turns out Lo'ak is good at surfing now, just like he used to be good at climbing trees, and Kiri likes to go protect turtle nests at night. Things are different but also the same.

-Tuk makes him decorate the entire house with her. Neytiri is not good at decorating, Christmas is not her thing, but it's not Spider's either. Santa never brought him things like he does for Tuk. They kind of let Jake and Tuk direct them into activities. Picking the tree is a very serious process, because it has to be one Lo'ak has climbed, but also can fit in the house. According to Kiri it gets harder every year. Kiri (and Neytiri) teach him how to bake sugar cookies, and Tuk teaches him how to decorate them to a nearly inedible result. Lo'ak takes him beach sledding, which is an activity his new girlfriend taught him. Jake makes him watch Die Hard four times.

-Neteyam hovers at the back of every activity in a way Spider isn't used to. He's usually right in the center of every activity, in Spider's memory. The king of the forest. Well, if Spider has to be involved then so does Neteyam.

-When Tuk directs Spider to put lights on the porch railings, he hands Neteyam a strand. When Kiri asks him to measure the flour, he asks Neteyam where the cups are. When Tuk goes to get the frosting for decorating, he gives Neteyam a blank canvas cookie snowman of his own to decorate. Spider does not let Neteyam leave him to go beach sledding with Lo'ak and Tsireya alone, and Neteyam watched Die Hard at least twice.

-On Christmas Eve, the family go with Kiri to check her turtle nests again. Neteyam is hovering in the back, not checking a nest, and it's just so weird Spider finds himself walking over and questioning him about it. What happened to the king of the forest that was always the center of everything going on?

-Neteyam says there isn't a forest here, and ever since they moved there, he hasn't been the center of much. He doesn't fit in here anymore. Well, that's just fine for Spider, he wasn't sure where he fit in in the forest, even if he loved it. He can't just not be involved at all. They can just not fit in together.

-And maybe, that is where they do fit in. Together.

[meganechan05]

Merry Christmas from HimeRitaMorf 🥰

[finchers-ipad]

do you guys think Tyler was forced to wear some christmas variation of his uniform at the Pressman?

[emry-stars-art]

for the mistletoe kiss, 2 for bee and andrew would be v cute and v wholesome

Anon how does it feel to be immediately in the running for sweetest request ever

Requests are open until the end of Dec ‘23

[senselessalchemist]

happy holidays (?)

[lurafita]

Stupid mundane traditions

Clary grew up mundane. When christmas comes around, she needs to teach the shadowhunters how to celebrate it, because her mom is dead and she has Luke and Simon (who is jewish but still celebrates with her) but she wants to celebrate with everyone too, even if that means explaining to a grumpy Alec why he and Jace need to go cut down a tree and haul it to the institute.

Alec: "Why are we doing this again?" Jace: "To make Clary happy." Alec: "I'm not sure if I care about Clary's happiness." Jace: "I care about Clary's happiness. Magnus cares about Clary's happiness." Alec: "Magnus isn't making me go out in the cold to cut down a tree though." Jace: "Do I have to recite the parabatai oath?" Alec: "I just don't understand the meaning of this." Jace: "You don't need to. Just help me kill a tree, carry it all the way to the institute, and then decorate its slowly rotting corpse." Alec: "… Mundanes are weird."

[sixminutestoriesblog]

mistletoe

Mistletoe is a fascinating plant even before we get into the Christmas (and other) traditions associated with it. Mistletoe is found practically world wide, with one version even thriving as far north as Siberia. It's also a parasitic plant, its sticky seeds spread by birds who leave them behind on trees where the seeds soon sprout and send their roots burrowing into the bark of their host to steal the nutrients for their own growth. It is also an evergreen, staying vibrant and leafed in the dead of winter, a brilliant ball of color against the starkness of the cold that stripes away so many other plants. Did I mention it has sticky seeds? The sap of the plant's berries is so sticky and strong, that farmers used to use it as an ingredient to make birdlime, a glue substance they would coat the branches of their trees in to catch small birds and sometimes, if the mix was strong enough, even birds of prey. And while some mistletoe plants count on birds and other animals that eat their berries to spread their seeds, some species take matters into their own hands and and build up water in their berries to the point that they literally explode, propelling the seeds at up to 30 miles per hour up to twenty feet! If there's a plant worth making up stories about, mistletoe is probably one of the most solid contenders.

And make up stories humanity did.

Possibly the most famous of these is about the Norse god Baldr. Baldr was the son of Odin and the brother of Thor and when he had a dream that he would die, his mother Frigg, went around to every plant and animal in the world and made them promise not to harm her son. They all agree, making Baldr unkillable. So unkillable that the gods made it a party trick to throw various dangerous items at Baldr during feasts just to watch them bounce off him, as one does. The only problem with this was that there was one plant that Frigg had either forgotten to ask or deemed so harmless that it didn't need to be asked. The lowly little spindly mistletoe. An opening like that can't be left unexploited and Loki, in his mischief, designed a weapon (a dart, an arrow, a spear depending on your story) and got Baldr's blind brother Hoth (or Hod or Hodr) to throw it. Sure enough, the mistletoe struck true and Baldr was killed. His death was the blow that presaged Ragnarok and the ending of the Norse gods' world.

Never neglect the little things.

Mistletoe isn't just associated with Norse stories though. The white seeds give off a sticky white sap and it shouldn't take much to figure out what humanity thought when they saw that. That's right - semen and fertility! The Celts saw it as the semen of their god of thunder, Taranis, and the Greeks called it 'oak sperm'. Yeah, that modern day tradition of kissing doesn't go half as hard as it could.

There is also some association with ancient Druids, though the only actual person we have to tell us so is Pliny, who described their harvesting methods for the plant as it grew on oak trees at midwinter. Some sensationalism may have been involved.

The Romans hung mistletoe over the doorways of their houses for protection and that habit carried through, hanging over European doorways and barns to ward off witches and lightning. Hanging mistletoe and other evergreens for the holidays came with rules though. You either had to take them down by the Epiphany, January 6th, or you had to leave them up for the new year when you could replace them with new branches. Taking them down after Epiphany was bad luck for the rest of the year otherwise.

It's jaggedly branching form wasn't just associated with lightning from the sky. Mistletoe was supposed to protect against epilepsy, lightning of the body, either by wearing a sprig of it under your clothes or, in more fancy style, having a knife hilt made from its wood. In fact there are several health traditions about mistletoe and its commonly called the cure-all in Appalachian remedy, good against a variety of nerve issues and hysteria. DO NOT DO THIS. Academic talk about folk cures aside, mistletoe is toxic. There are no recorded cases of mistletoe killing anyone and scientists are experimenting with medicinal uses for the plant - BIG HOWEVER mistletoe can lead to nausea, headaches and dizziness. In really bad cases, it can cause kidney and liver damage as well as heart and central nervous system problems.

Don't do mistletoe, kids. Stick to eating koolaid powder straight from the canister with a spoon.

Jumping back into the Christmas traditions, as an evergreen plant, mistletoe is often paired with holly and pine when decorating. And yes, the tradition of kissing under it goes back a long way. Remember it is a fertility plant. Unmarried women would try to steal sprigs of it from their local church's decorations to hide under their pillow. It was supposed to let them dream of their future husband. Likewise, a girl could predict her future marriage by burning an old sprig of mistletoe. If it burned steady, she'd have a good marriage ahead of her but if it burned in fits than her future marriage would be troubled. And yes, it is supposedly good luck to kiss under the mistletoe, one kiss for each of the berries plucked from it. Once all the berries are gone, no more kissing! And to ensure that those that did kiss under the mistletoe don't end up - gasp! - unmarried, the berryless sprig is to be burned on the Twelfth Night.

aw yeah, girl, you go get some!