Privilege.

Rockwell, Mistletoe, 1937

The origins of mistletoe tradition ...

The Druids started it. Mistletoe, a hemi-parasitic plant that grows on trees, has long been considered a cure-all with special properties: In the Aeneid, the hero brings a bough thought to be mistletoe—a symbol of vitality that remains green even in winter—to the underworld. But the earliest mention of mistletoe's romantic powers was by Roman natural historian Pliny the Elder, who scoffed at the Druids of the 1st Century A.D. for believing that "mistletoe, taken in drink, will impart fecundity to all animals that are barren." That romantic association was later expanded by the Norse myth about Baldur and his mother, Frigga, the goddess of love and marriage. According to legend, Frigga got all the plants and animals of the Earth to promise not to harm her son—except mistletoe. Loki, the god of mischief, took that opportunity to kill Baldur with a spear made of mistletoe. In some versions of the tale, Frigga's tears then turned into mistletoe berries, which brought Baldur back to life, prompting Frigga to declare mistletoe a symbol of love.

In his essay on Christmas Eve, Washington Irving vividly describes the proper setting ...

As we approached the house we heard the sound of music, and now and then a burst of laughter from one end of the building. This, Bracebridge said, must proceed from the servants' hall, where a great deal of revelry was permitted, and even encouraged, by the squire throughout the twelve days of Christmas, provided everything was done conformably to ancient usage. Here were kept up the old games of hoodman blind, shoe the wild mare, hot cockles, steal the white loaf, bob apple, and snap dragon; the Yule-clog and Christmas candle were regularly burnt, and the mistletoe with its white berries hung up, to the imminent peril of all the pretty housemaids.  The mistletoe is still hung up in farm-houses and kitchens at Christmas, and the young men have the privilege of kissing the girls under it, plucking each time a berry from the bush. When the berries are all plucked the privilege ceases.

Serenity.

Turner, Sketchbooks, n/d

Like a curtain slowly drawn

It stops suddenly half open,

Or, like grief itself, filled with gentle hope,

It becomes lighter in the shore-less dark,

Thus the moon barely wanes

Winding her way above the storm-tossed sea.

Stand upon this hill and behold endlessly

This scene of a formidable sea,

And it will seem to thee a waking dream.

That secret mind flowing in thee

Which even the day cannot scatter,

The serenity of thinking and the beating of the heart

Will enchain thee in this vision;

This golden-silver moon

Standing lonely over the sea,

All curtain the grief of even the hopeless.

And it appears that through the tempest

Moves a light caressing wind,

While the sea swells up with a roar,

Sometimes, like a battlefield it looks to me

The tempestuous sea,

Where the moon itself is a brilliant golden crown

Of a great king.

But even that moon is always beneath thee

Oh Master most high,

Oh forgive thou me

If even this master was frightened for a moment

Oh, noble moment, by art betrayed…

And how may one not delight in thee,

Oh thou young boy, but forgive thou me,

If I shall bend my white head

Before thy art divine

Thy bliss-wrought genius.

J.M.W. Turner