December 24, 2025 • 11 mins
Holly is waxy and super sharp, not exactly the kind of thing you'd want all over your house. Yet it happens every holiday season. Today we dig in to discover why.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck and it's ho ho short stuff. You're on
short Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
That's right. We're stealing one potential thing from our Christmas
episode just to do a Christmas style shorty to get
in the spirit of things. And we're gonna be talking
about holly today. Like you know, the plant, it's a shrub,
it can be a tree. 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, short,
(00:32):
shorty shrubs. Some can be big old trees. But everyone
knows holly for those waxy leaves that will draw blood
and those little crimson berries that grow on them.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
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?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I don't know. I My dirty secret is I don't
love holly just because it's so pointy and sharp. It's
almost like a thorn bush, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah. I have a big old holly tree outside the
house and oh yeah, it was getting a little thin,
so I've started to fertilize it twice a year, and
it is not fun to get under there and fertilize
the holly. Yeah, 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
(01:26):
eat the berries, and so on and so forth. So
I do have a special place in my heart for holly.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Well, we'll go for the most boring part of this all,
which is root words 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. Old English will translate
it as holigan nice Old Norse, holf nice, Dutch, holste
(01:53):
nice French. What would that be, frenchie hoo hoo nice,
sound like you from Philly hagey. And then Welsh is
a sealin and.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Think that's how you say that, But how you say
I have no idea. There's only like ten people who
can pronounce Welsh German.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I know this one is stech Palmer.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, I like that one.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
But it all probably comes from Proto Indo European languages
at the base which is q e l, which means
prickly or too prick.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, there you go. End of root word segment.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, wake up everyone.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So one thing I didn't know is apparently in long
standing tradition because this is Holly's 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 it goes back way further than that, and it's
kind of from all over the place because holly grows
(02:53):
in not just Europe, not just North America, but Asia
as well. It's a really well traveled, well trod shrub.
Yeah 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. Yeah,
it does make a lot of sense that cultures from
around the world and over the course of time would
(03:15):
have been like that. I'm going to drape a bunch
of symbolism on that plant.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of times it's
associated through like ancient cultures, with good luck, in this case,
good luck for men specifically, because for good luck for women,
ivy is that counterpart and if you've ever heard the
English Christmas carol, the Holly and the Ivy, that's what
they're talking about. Yeah, it is again a sacred plant
(03:42):
from the Druids. A lot of cultures thought it was
like good luck to put it in your house because
it's hardy 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 it'll ward off lightning and
lightning storm. Pretty cool, it'll protect your house. If you
(04:03):
were in Rome, they would associate it with Saturn, so
it obviously came about during their Saturnalia festival, a.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Lot which has a huge influence on Christmas. That was
the Romans mid to late December winter festival. Yeah, so
they used holly and then when the Christians came around,
the Romans were like, you're not allowed to use holly
for your Christmas celebration whatever that is. Yeah, it was
banned apparently at least at first. And then, like you said,
the Druids also had their own thing going on too,
(04:32):
So this is all happening at different times. I mean,
the Romans would have been celebrating Saturnalia, while the Druids
would have been celebrating their own thing. I don't know
that one influenced the other. Yeah, 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.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
It could be wrong, though, all Right, I bet someone knows.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, I'd love to know.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
You did mention some Christian symbolism. You know, anytime you
see anything red, generally in Christianity, that's going to symbolize
the blood of Christ from the crucifixion. You know, the
legend was that those berries were white, but then Christ's
blood stained them red as a reminder. And then the
pointed you know, the pointy points that I hate so much,
(05:18):
symbolized the crown of thorns during the Crucifixion, and in fact,
in German it is known as Christ's storn or Christ's thorn.
So that's pretty obvious.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Should we take a break?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah? We should?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
All right, enough of that, let's talk after the break
about the plant itself. Right after this.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Okay, Chuck, you made a lot of big promises about
talking about the holly plant itself before the break, and
I feel like we have to deliver on them.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yeah. I mean it's generally an evergreen, but not always.
It can also be deciduous.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Which is kind of weird. Yeah, how was that it?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, that's all I got.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
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 wintertime. I guess that they
are good in shade, they're good in sunlight. They do
like well drained soil, and they are either a male
plant or a female plant, which means they're dioecious. Yeah, yeah, dioecious.
I nailed it. And the male plants and the female
(06:53):
plants both flour, which is how they pollinate. But only
the female plants are the ones that produce berries.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
That's right. And you know they need to be close
to one another obviously for that production to occur, so
the male plant has to be near enough to a
female plant. Sure that pollination happens thanks to our little
bee friends, and also, as it turns out, well, not
cross pollination, but as far as you know, spreading that seed,
that's thanks mostly to birds obviously.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Well yeah, the birds like to eat 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.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, I stomp that thing out.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
That means that had a bird poop there at some point.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, I'd never thought of it that way. I can
only think of it that way from now on, though.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yeah, I mean it's true. There's really no other way
to look.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
At You know, who doesn't like to eat those red
berries humans? Because it's no good for you. It's toxic
to us. I mean, I don't know if it could kill,
you'd probably have to eat a ton of those, and
you'd probably be vomiting long before you died, such that
you would say, hey, maybe don't eat those. But yeah, nausea, bad,
(08:06):
bad stomach ache. So don't eat those red berries, which
is you know, big for kids, because when you see
that red berry in your kid, it looks like something
you should pick off and eat.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
It does for sure. Yeah. There's an old druid legend
that if you eat a holly berry it'll upset your
stomach pretty good. There's also I had not heard of this,
but there's something called birdline that you can make by
boiling the bark of a holly tree specifically, and it
makes the sticky substance that you can then take and
(08:34):
like paint onto the limbs of say a holly tree
or any treesy and it's so sticky it'll trap small
birds that alight on those limbs. I guess the only
reason you would want to do this if you want
to capture a bird, which you shouldn't be doing anyway.
But if you don't get to a 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.
(08:57):
So please don't start making birdline because you heard about
it on this episode.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
No, don't do that, But what you could do if
you're into carving things. Apparently the holly's wood is very hard,
great for carving, and a lot of chess pieces can
be made out of Hollywood because Hollywood, which I think
is kind of cool. Because I my friend have started
playing chess for the first time since probably high school,
(09:26):
because Ruby is in chess club and she's asked me
to play chess with her, so we've been playing every night,
and it's having a ball playing chess with her?
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Is that why you picked this episode?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
No, it's not why, but it's pretty interesting because I
was played. I dabbled in chess in high school. I
was never good or learned any strategy or technique or
took any classes or clubs. So it's all just intuition.
And so I'm basically at the point where she is
at ten years old and her kind of learning strategy
(09:57):
a little bit, and so we're like pretty evenly matched,
and it's just a lot of fun. Like I'm it's
opening brain pathways that I'd like, strategical pathways that aren't
tapped into very much for me. So I'm really digging it.
And for Christmas, I already threw down in like a
really nice handcarved chest set for us as a little surprise.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
That's cool. How'd she get into chess?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Has she She's like this is gonna make a bow
tie spin? When I joined, I think so? Has she
seen the Queen's gambit yet.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
No, I don't know how much you get into that, Yett.
I bet searching for Bobby Fisher could be a good
one though, for her.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Okay, all right, we'll start with that. Make sure she
seems the queen's gambit at some point.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
All right.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
One other thing you can do with Hollywood, because it's
so dense and sturdy, is to create a walking stick
out of it. Oh and if you carve a walking
stick out of Hollywood and there's not a druid on
the end, throw it away and start over because you
did it wrong.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
That sounds tad right.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
You got anything else?
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I got nothing else?
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Oh, everybody? Then that means this happy Holiday edition of
short Stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck and it's ho ho short stuff. You're on
short Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
That's right. We're stealing one potential thing from our Christmas
episode just to do a Christmas style shorty to get
in the spirit of things. And we're gonna be talking
about holly today. Like you know, the plant, it's a shrub,
it can be a tree. 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, short,
(00:32):
shorty shrubs. Some can be big old trees. But everyone
knows holly for those waxy leaves that will draw blood
and those little crimson berries that grow on them.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
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?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I don't know. I My dirty secret is I don't
love holly just because it's so pointy and sharp. It's
almost like a thorn bush, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah. I have a big old holly tree outside the
house and oh yeah, it was getting a little thin,
so I've started to fertilize it twice a year, and
it is not fun to get under there and fertilize
the holly. Yeah, 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
(01:26):
eat the berries, and so on and so forth. So
I do have a special place in my heart for holly.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Well, we'll go for the most boring part of this all,
which is root words 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. Old English will translate
it as holigan nice Old Norse, holf nice, Dutch, holste
(01:53):
nice French. What would that be, frenchie hoo hoo nice,
sound like you from Philly hagey. And then Welsh is
a sealin and.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Think that's how you say that, But how you say
I have no idea. There's only like ten people who
can pronounce Welsh German.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I know this one is stech Palmer.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, I like that one.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
But it all probably comes from Proto Indo European languages
at the base which is q e l, which means
prickly or too prick.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, there you go. End of root word segment.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, wake up everyone.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So one thing I didn't know is apparently in long
standing tradition because this is Holly's 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 it goes back way further than that, and it's
kind of from all over the place because holly grows
(02:53):
in not just Europe, not just North America, but Asia
as well. It's a really well traveled, well trod shrub.
Yeah 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. Yeah,
it does make a lot of sense that cultures from
around the world and over the course of time would
(03:15):
have been like that. I'm going to drape a bunch
of symbolism on that plant.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of times it's
associated through like ancient cultures, with good luck, in this case,
good luck for men specifically, because for good luck for women,
ivy is that counterpart and if you've ever heard the
English Christmas carol, the Holly and the Ivy, that's what
they're talking about. Yeah, it is again a sacred plant
(03:42):
from the Druids. A lot of cultures thought it was
like good luck to put it in your house because
it's hardy 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 it'll ward off lightning and
lightning storm. Pretty cool, it'll protect your house. If you
(04:03):
were in Rome, they would associate it with Saturn, so
it obviously came about during their Saturnalia festival, a.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Lot which has a huge influence on Christmas. That was
the Romans mid to late December winter festival. Yeah, so
they used holly and then when the Christians came around,
the Romans were like, you're not allowed to use holly
for your Christmas celebration whatever that is. Yeah, it was
banned apparently at least at first. And then, like you said,
the Druids also had their own thing going on too,
(04:32):
So this is all happening at different times. I mean,
the Romans would have been celebrating Saturnalia, while the Druids
would have been celebrating their own thing. I don't know
that one influenced the other. Yeah, 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.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
It could be wrong, though, all Right, I bet someone knows.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, I'd love to know.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
You did mention some Christian symbolism. You know, anytime you
see anything red, generally in Christianity, that's going to symbolize
the blood of Christ from the crucifixion. You know, the
legend was that those berries were white, but then Christ's
blood stained them red as a reminder. And then the
pointed you know, the pointy points that I hate so much,
(05:18):
symbolized the crown of thorns during the Crucifixion, and in fact,
in German it is known as Christ's storn or Christ's thorn.
So that's pretty obvious.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Should we take a break?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah? We should?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
All right, enough of that, let's talk after the break
about the plant itself. Right after this.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Okay, Chuck, you made a lot of big promises about
talking about the holly plant itself before the break, and
I feel like we have to deliver on them.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yeah. I mean it's generally an evergreen, but not always.
It can also be deciduous.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Which is kind of weird. Yeah, how was that it?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, that's all I got.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
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 wintertime. I guess that they
are good in shade, they're good in sunlight. They do
like well drained soil, and they are either a male
plant or a female plant, which means they're dioecious. Yeah, yeah, dioecious.
I nailed it. And the male plants and the female
(06:53):
plants both flour, which is how they pollinate. But only
the female plants are the ones that produce berries.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
That's right. And you know they need to be close
to one another obviously for that production to occur, so
the male plant has to be near enough to a
female plant. Sure that pollination happens thanks to our little
bee friends, and also, as it turns out, well, not
cross pollination, but as far as you know, spreading that seed,
that's thanks mostly to birds obviously.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Well yeah, the birds like to eat 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.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, I stomp that thing out.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
That means that had a bird poop there at some point.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, I'd never thought of it that way. I can
only think of it that way from now on, though.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yeah, I mean it's true. There's really no other way
to look.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
At You know, who doesn't like to eat those red
berries humans? Because it's no good for you. It's toxic
to us. I mean, I don't know if it could kill,
you'd probably have to eat a ton of those, and
you'd probably be vomiting long before you died, such that
you would say, hey, maybe don't eat those. But yeah, nausea, bad,
(08:06):
bad stomach ache. So don't eat those red berries, which
is you know, big for kids, because when you see
that red berry in your kid, it looks like something
you should pick off and eat.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
It does for sure. Yeah. There's an old druid legend
that if you eat a holly berry it'll upset your
stomach pretty good. There's also I had not heard of this,
but there's something called birdline that you can make by
boiling the bark of a holly tree specifically, and it
makes the sticky substance that you can then take and
(08:34):
like paint onto the limbs of say a holly tree
or any treesy and it's so sticky it'll trap small
birds that alight on those limbs. I guess the only
reason you would want to do this if you want
to capture a bird, which you shouldn't be doing anyway.
But if you don't get to a 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.
(08:57):
So please don't start making birdline because you heard about
it on this episode.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
No, don't do that, But what you could do if
you're into carving things. Apparently the holly's wood is very hard,
great for carving, and a lot of chess pieces can
be made out of Hollywood because Hollywood, which I think
is kind of cool. Because I my friend have started
playing chess for the first time since probably high school,
(09:26):
because Ruby is in chess club and she's asked me
to play chess with her, so we've been playing every night,
and it's having a ball playing chess with her?
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Is that why you picked this episode?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
No, it's not why, but it's pretty interesting because I
was played. I dabbled in chess in high school. I
was never good or learned any strategy or technique or
took any classes or clubs. So it's all just intuition.
And so I'm basically at the point where she is
at ten years old and her kind of learning strategy
(09:57):
a little bit, and so we're like pretty evenly matched,
and it's just a lot of fun. Like I'm it's
opening brain pathways that I'd like, strategical pathways that aren't
tapped into very much for me. So I'm really digging it.
And for Christmas, I already threw down in like a
really nice handcarved chest set for us as a little surprise.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
That's cool. How'd she get into chess?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Has she She's like this is gonna make a bow
tie spin? When I joined, I think so? Has she
seen the Queen's gambit yet.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
No, I don't know how much you get into that, Yett.
I bet searching for Bobby Fisher could be a good
one though, for her.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Okay, all right, we'll start with that. Make sure she
seems the queen's gambit at some point.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
All right.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
One other thing you can do with Hollywood, because it's
so dense and sturdy, is to create a walking stick
out of it. Oh and if you carve a walking
stick out of Hollywood and there's not a druid on
the end, throw it away and start over because you
did it wrong.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
That sounds tad right.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
You got anything else?
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I got nothing else?
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Oh, everybody? Then that means this happy Holiday edition of
short Stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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