The Mistletoe

The Mistletoe.

Oh, dainty odor of the mistletoe,
Sending my fancy off to long ago!
All this small room with faint perfume beset,
A modest mimicry of violet.

Those ancient days when linen robes of priest
Caught the green bough to deck some furious feast,
Breaking the brittlestems with knives of gold –
Those days were not so fine as some less old.

As jovial days, when jolly Christmastide
Filled all the earth with mirth, dear love beside,
Sweet was it then, beneath the mistletoe,
To catch a pretty maid and kiss her — so!

Oh,dear was yesterday beneath the bough,
And dear the kisses given there, I trow;
Full sweet the days we never can forget,
But, ah, tomorrows will be sweeter yet!

– New Orleans Picayne.

Edwardsville Intelligencer (Edwardsville, Illinois) Dec 21, 1892

The Newark Advocate (Newark, Ohio) Dec 19, 1911

Mistletoe Kisses

Sent a Box of Mistletoe to Recall a First Kiss

“SIGN on the dotted line, lady.”

“But are you sure this is for me?”

“It says, ‘Miss Martha Brent, 220 Cassland;’ ain’t that you? There’s no mistake; its yours all right.”

Miss Brent drew the box into the house and opened it with trembling hands. And there stood a box filled with mistletoe, lovely white berries like pearls.

“What in the world!” ejaculated Miss Brent. “Mistletoe for an old maid! It must be a joke!”

But she took it out and decorated her tiny home.

That night her door bell rang. When she went to the door there stood a prosperous, middle-aged man.

His hair was beginning to turn gray and he had a vaguely familiar look.

“Miss Martha,” he said, “thirty years ago tonight we were attending a party at Mary Holland’s. I kissed you under the mistletoe and you boxed my ears soundly. I said, ‘I thought girls liked to be kissed.’ You replied, ‘Not by a good-for-nothing Fitzgerald.’

“I’m no longer good-for-nothing. May I try again, Martha?”

– Jane Roth.
(c. 1927. Western Newspaper Union.)

The Deming Headlight (Deming, New Mexico) Dec 16, 1927

Appleton Post Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin) Dec 2, 1921