The Holly and the Ivy

This ancient carol is beautiful and the voices on this are awesome! Hope you like it!

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[Nazma Islam]

Im a Muslim and so dont celebrate Christmas, but have to say that this is one of my all time favourite christmas carol, it brings back memories of when i when i was a young girl at school and singing christmas carols at assembly. it didnt matter that i wasnt a Christian, I loved Christmas time when I was a girl, its such a pity its too commercialised these days!

[axhand1e]

thumbs up if your still listening to this in 2012

and the years after :3

[TheJboy88]

One of these days, I really hope I'll actually find a holly tree with a crown on it.

[Bethycutie13]

The ivy is a feminine plant- part of goddess worship. The holly is masculine, took over for the ivy as religious symbol. What happened, like many of our traditions (This is why I threatened to wrap myself in holly, ivy, and shout, "WOTAN!" during candle lighting) some "Pagan" beliefs, um, got shoehorned in.Even a Catholic chapel has an image of a Roman demi god in its floor, water escapes via the nostrils. We appropriated and taught using familiar symbols.I choose to go for the message of love.

[vwoxy1]

For a very long time, Christianity had a habit of borrowing Pagan traditions and incorporating them into the Christian holidays, mostly to get converts to stay Christian. This is why we have the Easter bunny (in fact, why we use a word derived from "Eostre" for the Paschal feast), a man who comes and gives presents on (or before, depending on where you live) Christmas (honestly, Epiphany makes much more sense as a day to give gifts), etc.

[freshcaughtbass]

the season of "christmas" has nothing to do with christianity- but christian zealots originally had the desire to overlay christian doctrine on the pagan solstice celebrations, and or the Roman Saturnia and the Persian Yalda celebrations, on these shortest days of the year.....many religious scholars believe christ was born sometime in early summer

[tmcgsf]

"The Holly and the Ivy" is an English traditional Christmas carol. The carol contains intermingled Christian and Pagan imagery, with holly and ivy representing Pagan fertility symbols. Holly and ivy have been the mainstay of English Christmas decoration for church use since at least the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when they are mentioned regularly in churchwardens’ accounts.

[wingedsonar]

I have this song on my Christmas playlist and love the singing, but the lyrics themselves always confuse me. How do holly, deer and Mary bearing Jesus Christ correlate? Does holly grow in the Middle East? Do deer run in forests in the Middle East? The merry organ? She seems shoehorned into a song that perhaps originally had nothing to do with Christianity and more to do with pure Solstice aspects.

[Raffel Dilrange]

Wonderful....



[sandi43able]

I love this christmas song <3

[DanDirges]

Lovely friends!

[Alexander G.]

That's okay, because Holly & Ivy was a pagan song adopted by christians :P