Short Stuff: Why is holly a holiday thing? | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW

What this episode is about

The discussion explores the significance of holly during the holiday season, highlighting its various species that range from shrubs to trees, characteristic shiny leaves, and bright red berries. It also delves into the etymology of the word "holly" and its non-relation to "holy," revealing interesting facts about the plant's blooming cycle and its role in nature.

Key takeaways

• Holly's sharp leaves aren't just prickly—they've cut through cultures, embodying ancient beliefs and seasonal cheer.
• While holly's red berries symbolize Christ’s blood to some, to others it was ancient amphoras of celebration!
• Roses are red, violets are blue, but holly plants thrive in winter with their bold hues shining through.
• From Druid rituals to Roman Saturnalia, holly’s journey proves it's the Rocky Balboa of festive flora!
• Turns out, 'holly' isn't derived from 'holy'—language, like nature, can be quite prickly and convoluted!

Who speaks in this episode?

• Josh Clark (Host) · 6 min speaking
• Chuck Bryant (Host) · 6 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Holly
2. 3:00 – 6:00: Druids, Saturnalia
3. 9:00 – 11:30: iHeart Radio, Searching for Bobby Fisher, The Queen's Gambit

Notable quotes from "Short Stuff: Why is holly a holiday thing? | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"

• Because this is Holly is 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…

  about Holly · at 2:37

• About during their Saturnalia festival a lot which has a huge influence on Christmas.

  about Saturnalia · at 4:08

• There's an old druid legend that if you eat a holly berry, it'll upset your stomach.

  about Druids · at 8:16

• Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

  about iHeart Radio · at 11:10

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

Companies & orgs

• iHeart Radio — Company · Publisher/producer organization · 1 mention · first at 11:10
  Named in the outro as the producer of Stuff You Should Know and as the platform/app where listeners can find more podcasts.

Concepts & topics

• Holly — Concept · Core topic · 1 mention · first at 0:20
  The episode is a Christmas-themed 'Short Stuff' focused on the holly plant—its botany, etymology, cultural symbolism, and historical associations.
• Druids — Concept · Referenced tradition/source of symbolism · 2 mentions · first at 3:37
  Druids are cited as treating holly as a sacred plant and as a source of legends (including a stomach-upset warning about berries).

Places & events

• Saturnalia — Event · Historical reference point · 1 mention · first at 4:08
  Saturnalia is presented as a Roman mid-to-late December festival where holly was used, and as a major influence on later Christmas traditions.

Media & podcasts

• The Queen's Gambit — Media · Referenced media recommendation (chess-related) · 1 mention · first at 10:29
  Mentioned as a chess-related show the hosts suggest for a child learning chess, connecting to a tangent about chess sets and holly wood.
  Make sure she sees the Queen's Gambit at some point.
• Searching for Bobby Fisher — Media · Referenced media recommendation (chess-related) · 1 mention · first at 10:34
  Suggested as a potentially good chess movie to start with for a child, in the same chess tangent as The Queen’s Gambit.
  No. I don't know how much you get into that yet. I bet Searching for Bobby Fisher could be a good one, though, for her.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:04 Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's ho ho short stuff here on short stuff.

0:11 That's right. Uh we're we're stealing one potential thing from our Christmas episode just to do a a Christmas style shorty to get in the spirit of things. And we're going to be talking about holly today.

0:22 Uh like you know the plant. It's a it's a shrub. It can be a tree. Uh 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 shorty uh shorty shrubs,

0:34 some can be big old trees, but everyone knows holly for those uh waxy leaves that will draw blood and those little crimson berries that grow on them.

0:45 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?

0:57 I don't know. Oh, I I my dirty secret is I don't love holly just cuz it's so pointy and sharp. It's it's almost like a thorn bush, you know.

1:06 Yeah, I have a big old holly tree uh outside the house and it was getting a little thin, so I've started to um fertilize it twice a year and it is not fun to get under there and fertilize the holly.

1:18 Yeah, that's 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.

1:31 Uh, well, we'll go over the most boring part of this all, which is root words. Um, 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. Um, old English will translate it uh as holen.

1:47 Nice. Uh, old Norse, holer. Nice. Dutch holst. Nice. French uh what would that be? Frenchie. Ho

1:57 ho. Nice. Sound like you're from Philly. Higgy. Uh, and then Welsh is Salin and German.

2:05 I don't think that's how you say that, but that's how you spell it. I have no idea. There's only like 10 people who can pronounce Welsh.

2:12 German. I know this one is Palma. Yeah, I like that one. Uh, but it all probably comes from proto Indo-Uropean languages at the base, which is Qel, which means prickly or to prick. Yeah, there you go. End of root word segment.

2:30 Yeah. Wake up everyone. So, um, one thing I didn't know is apparently in long-standing tradition because this is Holly is another great example of how, um, you associate with Christmas, uh, 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 um not just Europe, not just North America, but Asia as well. It's a really welltraveled, welltrodd shrub 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 that it does make a lot of sense that cultures from around the world and over the course of time would have been like that.

3:16 I'm going to drape a bunch of symbolism on that plant. Yeah, for sure. Um, I think a lot of times it's associated through like ancient cultures, uh, with good luck, uh, in this case, good luck for men specifically because, uh, for good luck for women, uh, ivy is that counterpart. And if you've ever heard the English Christmas carol, the holly and the ivy, uh, that's what they're talking about. Um, yeah, it is uh 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 hearty 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 um like it'll ward off uh lightning and a lightning storm.

4:01 Be cool. Uh it'll protect your house. Uh if you were in Rome, uh they would associate it with Saturn. So it obviously uh came about during their Saturnalia festival a lot

4:12 which has a huge influence on Christmas. That was the Romans mid to late December winter festival.

4:16 Yeah. So they used holly and then when the Christians came around the Romans are like you're not allowed to use holly for your Christmas celebration whatever that is.

4:24 Yeah. Uh it was banned apparently at least at first. Um and then like you said the druids also had their own thing going on too. So this is all happening at at different times. I mean the Romans would have been celebrating Saturnelia while the Druids would have been celebrating their own thing. I don't know that one influenced the other. 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. I could be wrong though.

4:54 All right. I bet someone knows. Yeah, I'd love to know. Uh you did mention some Christian symbolism. Um, you know, anytime you see anything red generally in Christianity, that's going to symbolize the blood of Christ from the crucifixion. Uh, the the, you know, the the legend was that those berries were white, but then Christ blood stained them red as a reminder. Uh, and then the pointed, you know, the pointy points that I hate so much symbolized the crown of thorns during the crucifixion. Uh, and in fact in German, um, it is known as Christthornne or Christ thorn. So that's pretty obvious.

5:28 Sure. Should we take a break? Yeah, we should. All right, enough of that. Uh let's talk after the break uh about the 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

6:14 we have to to deliver on them. Yeah. Uh I mean, it's generally an evergreen, but not always. It can also uh be deciduous, which is kind of cool. weird.

6:24 Yeah. Oh, is 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 winter time." I guess that they are good in shade. They're good in sunlight. They do like well- drained soil. Um, and they are either a male plant or a female plant, which means they're dio.

6:47 Yeah. Yeah. Dioishious. I nailed it. Um, and the male plants and the female plants both flower, which is how they pollinate, but only the female plants are the ones that uh produce berries.

6:59 That's right. Uh, and you know, they need to be close to one another obviously for that uh production to occur. So, the male plant has to be near enough to a female plant.

7:07 Sure. Uh, that pollination happens thanks to our little bee friends. Uh, and also as it turns out, well, not crosspollination, but as far as um, you know, spreading that seed. That's thanks, uh, mostly to birds, obviously.

7:21 Well, yeah, the birds like to eat the the 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?

7:32 Yeah, me too. I stomped that thing out. That means that a bird pooped there at some point. Yeah, I'd never thought of it that that way, but I can only think of it that way from now on, though.

7:43 Yeah, I mean, it's true. There's really no other way to look at it. Uh, you know, who doesn't like to eat those red berries?

7:49 Who? Uh, humans because it's no good for you. It's uh it's toxic to us. Um, I mean, you I don't know if it could kill you. You'd probably have to eat a ton of those. Uh, and you'd probably be vomiting long long before you died

8:02 such that you would say, "Hey, maybe don't eat those." But uh yeah, nausea, bad bad stomach aches. So don't eat those red berries, which is, you know, big for kids because when you see that red berry and you're a kid, it looks like something you should pick off and eat.

8:14 It it does for sure. Yeah. Um there's an old druid legend that if you eat a holly berry, it'll upset your stomach.

8:21 Yeah. Pretty good. Uh there's also I had not heard of this, but there's something called bird lime that you can make by boiling the bark of a holly tree specifically, and it makes this sticky substance that you can then take and like paint onto the limbs of say a holly tree or any tree.

8:38 That's crazy. And it's so sticky it'll trap small birds that a light on those limbs. I guess the only reason you would want to do this is if you want to capture a bird, which you shouldn't be doing anyway, but um if you don't get to the 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 bird lime because you heard about it on this episode.

9:02 No, don't do that. Uh but what you could do uh if you're into carving things uh apparently the the Holl's wood is very hard great for carving and a lot of chess pieces uh can be made out of Holly um Hollywood because Hollywood uh which I think is kind of cool because I my friend have started playing chess for the first time since probably high school uh because Ruby is in chess club and she's asked me to play chess with her. So,

9:30 uh, we've been playing every night and it's I'm having a ball playing chess with her.

9:34 Is that why you picked this episode? No, it's not why, but it's pretty interesting because I was I played I dabbled in chess in high school. I was never good or learned any strategy or technique or took any classes or clubs.

9:49 So, it's all just intuition. And so, I'm basically at the point where she is at 10 years old. Neat.

9:55 Uh, in her, you know, kind of learning strategy a little bit. And so we're like pretty evenly matched and it's it's just a lot of fun. Like I'm it's opening brain pathways that uh I did like strategical pathways that aren't tapped into very much for me. Uh so I'm really digging it. And for Christmas I already threw it on in like a really nice handcarved chess set for us as a little surprise.

10:16 That's cool. How did 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 uh she's like, "This is gonna make his bow tie spin when I join."

10:28 I think so. Has she seen The Queen's Gambit yet? Uh, no. Uh, I don't know how much you get into that yet. I bet I bet Searching for Bobby Fisher could be a good one, though, for her.

10:39 Okay. All right. We'll start with that. Make sure she sees the Queen's Gambit at some point.

10:43 All right. Uh, one other thing you can do with Hollywood because it's so dense and sturdy is create a walking stick out of it.

10:49 Oh. And if you uh carve a walking stick out of holly wood and there's not a druid on the end, throw it away and start over because you did it wrong.

10:59 That sounds great. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Oh, everybody then that means this happy holiday edition of Short Stuff is out.

11:10 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Short Stuff: Why is holly a holiday thing? | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"?

Josh Clark (Host), Chuck Bryant (Host).

What is "Short Stuff: Why is holly a holiday thing? | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW" about?

The discussion explores the significance of holly during the holiday season, highlighting its various species that range from shrubs to trees, characteristic shiny leaves, and bright red berries. It also delves into the etymology of the word "holly" and its non-relation to "holy," revealing interesting facts about the plant's blooming cycle and its role in nature.

What is mentioned in this Stuff You Should Know episode?

6 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Holly, Saturnalia, Druids, iHeart Radio, The Queen's Gambit, Searching for Bobby Fisher. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Short Stuff: Why is holly a holiday thing? | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"?

The episode runs 12 min; the transcript is about 2,205 words in 46 timestamped sections.

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