Seal Beach Cub Scout Pack 116 makes an annual trek up to Mt. Baldy to harvest the parasite mistletoe from the trees.
“We then sell it here and there as a fund raiser for the Dens,” said Thad Schamberger, whose group represents Den 2, made up of fourth grade boys. “Rob Jahncke at Javatini was kind enough to allow us to sell it at his coffee shop, not taking a dime for his efforts, all proceeds went back to the scouts. “We sold about $125 with Santa and Javatini netted us $75.”
The Den recently chartered with United Methodist Church on 10th Street and Central Avenue in Old Town Seal Beach.
Mistletoe was often considered a pest that kills trees and devalues natural habitats, but was recently recognized as an ecological keystone species, an organism that has a disproportionately pervasive influence over its community. Many animals depend on mistletoe for food.
They eat the leaves and young shoots, transferring pollen between plants, and dispersing the sticky seeds.
In western North America the juicy berries of mistletoe are eaten and spread by birds. When eaten, some seeds pass unharmed through their digestive systems; if the birds’ droppings happen to land on a suitable branch, the seeds may stick long enough to germinate.
As the plants mature, they grow into masses of branching stems, which some refer to as “witches’ brooms.”
The dense evergreen witches’ brooms formed by the dwarf mistletoes also makes excellent locations for roosting and nesting of the northern spotted owl.
The history of mistletoe, which can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, is long, strange, and full of contradictions.
Certain varieties are poisonous, for starters, and ingesting their toxic white berries has been known to cause a host of stomach problems (some poison control centers send out “holiday safety” fliers every year). Yet Hippocrates used other types of mistletoe to treat menstrual pains, and through the centuries it’s been enlisted to fight leprosy, infertility, epilepsy, and even cancer.
So why do we kiss under mistletoe every Christmas?
Most people believe early Christians integrated mistletoe into their celebrations as the religion spread across third-century Europe.
However, the story goes back to the Norse god Baldur—second son of Odin, god of truth and light. Apparently when he was murdered with a dart made out of mistletoe, his mother took an oath to never allow mistletoe to be used as a weapon ever again. Instead, she vowed to place a kiss on anyone who passed under it.
According to an old Christmas custom, a man and a woman who meet under a hanging of mistletoe were obliged to kiss.
