Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's ho ho short stuff. You're on short Stuff.
That's right. We're stealing one potential thing from our Christmas episode just to do a Christmas style shorty to get in the spirit of things. And we're gonna be talking about holly today. Like you know, the plant, it's a shrub, it can be a tree. It's in North America, it's in Asia, it's in Europe. There are a lot of different species and like I said, some can be little, short,
shorty shrubs. Some can be big old trees. But everyone knows holly for those waxy leaves that will draw blood and those little crimson berries that grow on them.
Yeah. But there's something about holly that I did not know until I was studying was that they bloom in the spring and early summer. Have you ever seen a holly plant bloom white flowers?
I don't know. I My dirty secret is I don't love holly just because it's so pointy and sharp. It's almost like a thorn bush, you know.
Yeah. I have a big old holly tree outside the house and oh yeah, it was getting a little thin, so I've started to fertilize it twice a year, and it is not fun to get under there and fertilize the holly. Yeah, that's no good, but it is pretty. And I love all the berries, and I love the birds coming to eat the berries, and I love that the birds love that. I love the birds coming to eat the berries, and so on and so forth. So I do have a special place in my heart for holly.
Well, we'll go for the most boring part of this all, which is root words holly. It's a Christmas thing, obviously, but it didn't come from the word holy, which you may be surprised about. I wasn't. Old English will translate it as holigan nice Old Norse, holf nice, Dutch, holste nice French. What would that be, frenchie hoo hoo nice, sound like you from Philly hagey. And then Welsh is a sealin and.
Think that's how you say that, But how you say I have no idea. There's only like ten people who can pronounce Welsh German.
I know this one is stech Palmer.
Yeah, I like that one.
But it all probably comes from Proto Indo European languages at the base which is q e l, which means prickly or too prick.
Yeah, there you go. End of root word segment.
Yeah, wake up everyone.
So one thing I didn't know is apparently in long standing tradition because this is Holly's another great example of how you associate with Christmas. Christians have kind of adopted it with their own kind of symbolism associated with it, but it goes back way further than that, and it's kind of from all over the place because holly grows in not just Europe, not just North America, but Asia as well. It's a really well traveled, well trod shrub. Yeah that because it stands out so much in winter.
It's usually evergreen. Those leaves are unmistakable. The berries are just so bright red against like a snowy background. Yeah, it does make a lot of sense that cultures from around the world and over the course of time would have been like that. I'm going to drape a bunch of symbolism on that plant.
Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of times it's associated through like ancient cultures, with good luck, in this case, good luck for men specifically, because for good luck for women, ivy is that counterpart and if you've ever heard the English Christmas carol, the Holly and the Ivy, that's what they're talking about. Yeah, it is again a sacred plant
from the Druids. A lot of cultures thought it was like good luck to put it in your house because it's hardy and strong, and again those bright red colors when it's harsh outside means it's got to be good luck to put it on your house. But it gets even more specific sometimes that it'll ward off lightning and lightning storm. Pretty cool, it'll protect your house. If you were in Rome, they would associate it with Saturn, so it obviously came about during their Saturnalia festival, a.
Lot which has a huge influence on Christmas. That was the Romans mid to late December winter festival. Yeah, so they used holly and then when the Christians came around, the Romans were like, you're not allowed to use holly for your Christmas celebration whatever that is. Yeah, it was banned apparently at least at first. And then, like you said, the Druids also had their own thing going on too,
So this is all happening at different times. I mean, the Romans would have been celebrating Saturnalia, while the Druids would have been celebrating their own thing. I don't know that one influenced the other. Yeah, I know that they were connected via Rome at one point in time, But I feel like the druids celebration and use of holly in the wintertime was contemporaneous and not influenced by the Romans.
It could be wrong, though, all Right, I bet someone knows.
Yeah, I'd love to know.
You did mention some Christian symbolism. You know, anytime you see anything red, generally in Christianity, that's going to symbolize the blood of Christ from the crucifixion. You know, the legend was that those berries were white, but then Christ's blood stained them red as a reminder. And then the pointed you know, the pointy points that I hate so much, symbolized the crown of thorns during the Crucifixion, and in fact, in German it is known as Christ's storn or Christ's thorn.
So that's pretty obvious.
Sure.
Should we take a break?
Yeah? We should?
All right, enough of that, let's talk after the break about the plant itself. Right after this.
Okay, Chuck, you made a lot of big promises about talking about the holly plant itself before the break, and I feel like we have to deliver on them.
Yeah. I mean it's generally an evergreen, but not always. It can also be deciduous.
Which is kind of weird. Yeah, how was that it?
Yeah, that's all I got.
The most of them are evergreen, though, like I said, around the world, which is why people are like, I really like that plant in wintertime. I guess that they are good in shade, they're good in sunlight. They do like well drained soil, and they are either a male plant or a female plant, which means they're dioecious. Yeah, yeah, dioecious. I nailed it. And the male plants and the female plants both flour, which is how they pollinate. But only the female plants are the ones that produce berries.
That's right. And you know they need to be close to one another obviously for that production to occur, so the male plant has to be near enough to a female plant. Sure that pollination happens thanks to our little bee friends, and also, as it turns out, well, not cross pollination, but as far as you know, spreading that seed, that's thanks mostly to birds obviously.
Well yeah, the birds like to eat the berries with the four seeds in them, and they go poop them out, and a new holly plant grows. Have you ever looked down and seen a little holly plant sticking up out of the ground.
Yeah, I stomp that thing out.
That means that had a bird poop there at some point.
Yeah, I'd never thought of it that way. I can only think of it that way from now on, though.
Yeah, I mean it's true. There's really no other way to look.
At You know, who doesn't like to eat those red berries humans? Because it's no good for you. It's toxic to us. I mean, I don't know if it could kill, you'd probably have to eat a ton of those, and you'd probably be vomiting long before you died, such that you would say, hey, maybe don't eat those. But yeah, nausea, bad,
bad stomach ache. So don't eat those red berries, which is you know, big for kids, because when you see that red berry in your kid, it looks like something you should pick off and eat.
It does for sure. Yeah. There's an old druid legend that if you eat a holly berry it'll upset your stomach pretty good. There's also I had not heard of this, but there's something called birdline that you can make by boiling the bark of a holly tree specifically, and it makes the sticky substance that you can then take and like paint onto the limbs of say a holly tree or any treesy and it's so sticky it'll trap small
birds that alight on those limbs. I guess the only reason you would want to do this if you want to capture a bird, which you shouldn't be doing anyway. But if you don't get to a bird in time, the bird will starve to death. It's that sticky and holds that fast. So it's illegal actually in some countries. So please don't start making birdline because you heard about it on this episode.
No, don't do that, But what you could do if you're into carving things. Apparently the holly's wood is very hard, great for carving, and a lot of chess pieces can be made out of Hollywood because Hollywood, which I think is kind of cool. Because I my friend have started playing chess for the first time since probably high school, because Ruby is in chess club and she's asked me to play chess with her, so we've been playing every night, and it's having a ball playing chess with her?
Is that why you picked this episode?
No, it's not why, but it's pretty interesting because I was played. I dabbled in chess in high school. I was never good or learned any strategy or technique or took any classes or clubs. So it's all just intuition. And so I'm basically at the point where she is at ten years old and her kind of learning strategy a little bit, and so we're like pretty evenly matched, and it's just a lot of fun. Like I'm it's opening brain pathways that I'd like, strategical pathways that aren't
tapped into very much for me. So I'm really digging it. And for Christmas, I already threw down in like a really nice handcarved chest set for us as a little surprise.
That's cool. How'd she get into chess?
Just chess club at school she signed up for I have no idea why. Probably some boy was in it that she had a crush on, would be my guess.
Has she She's like this is gonna make a bow tie spin? When I joined, I think so? Has she seen the Queen's gambit yet.
No, I don't know how much you get into that, Yett. I bet searching for Bobby Fisher could be a good one though, for her.
Okay, all right, we'll start with that. Make sure she seems the queen's gambit at some point.
All right.
One other thing you can do with Hollywood, because it's so dense and sturdy, is to create a walking stick out of it. Oh and if you carve a walking stick out of Hollywood and there's not a druid on the end, throw it away and start over because you did it wrong.
That sounds tad right.
You got anything else?
I got nothing else?
Oh, everybody? Then that means this happy Holiday edition of short Stuff is out.
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