The little valley my wife, Elizabeth, and I live in three miles west of Bryson City on the southern boundary of the Great Smoky Mountains Park is surrounded on three sides by high ridges. One evening in early December, as I was walking down the trail that leads to our house, the sun dropped below the ridge crest and the valley floor quickly darkened into a blue haze. But high on the western rim the trees along the national park boundary were suffused with light.

They stood clearly etched against the fading light and seemed, as objects so often do in winter, to move closer. The bare gray limbs of every oak along one section of the ridge were hung with shimmering, globular clusters of mistletoe. It was not difficult at that moment to comprehend why mistletoe has for so long — at this time of the year — served as an emblem of renewal.

The custom of decorating with mistletoe during New Year’s observances goes back to the ceremonials of the Druids. Mistletoe is a reminder of the ancient custom of keeping green things indoors in winter as a refuge for the spirits of the wood exiled by the severities of cold.

Such high regard for mistletoe evolved, in part, because the plant is an evergreen. But there are many evergreens. Mistletoe was singled out because it grew not on the earth, but on high. And it tended then, as it does today, to appear on various species of oak. One of the oak species it often appeared on in Europe was English oak, the most sacred tree in pagan ritual.

The mistletoe revered by the European druids was a different species than the one that occurs in our part of the world, but the early settlers soon located an American look-a-like and adopted it as their ceremonial evergreen.

There are several mistletoe species in North America, but the one commonly associated with the Christmas season is “Phoradendron serotinum,” which is found throughout the east from New Jersey to Florida and into the mid-west.

The genus designation is descriptive of the mistletoe lifestyle: “phor” derives from the Greek word for “thief,” while “dendron” means “tree.” This canny plant does in fact siphon much of its sustenance from host trees. And the tactic mistletoe employs to establish itself high in the boughs of deciduous trees is ingenious.

Mistletoe seeds are coated with a very sticky substance (viscin) that’s poisonous to humans, causing severe irritation of the digestive tract; nevertheless, numerous birds — notably cedar waxwings and bluebirds — are inordinately fond of the translucent white berries. A seed that has been eaten retains its adhesive qualities in the bird’s digestive tract and when excreted clings to any branch that it might hit. Seeds also stick to the beaks and claws of foraging birds. When they pause to groom themselves on tree limbs, the birds unwittingly distribute mistletoe seeds from treetop to treetop throughout the woodlands. Germinating seeds then penetrate their hosts via short root-like structures.

As the anthropologist James Mooney noted over a century ago, the ancient Cherokees were close observers of the natural world, “and some of their plant names are peculiarly apt. Thus the mistletoe, which never grows alone but is found always with its roots fixed in the bark of some supporting tree or shrub from which it draws its sustenance, is called by a name (‘uda’li’) which signifies ‘it is married.’”

Mistletoes often form colonies high in the crowns of a tree or cluster of trees. Once the host trees shed their leaves in fall, their tenacious guests become apparent — green emblems of an enduring strategy for survival that for thousands of years humans have readily identified with during the long cold days of winter.

Happy New Year!

George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C. 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com.