The agricultural customs are just those of the summer feasts over again. Once more the fertilization spirit is abroad in the land. The embodiment of it in vegetation takes several forms. Obviously the last foliage and burgeoning flowers of spring and summer are no longer available. But there is, to begin with, the sheaf of corn or ‘harvest-May’ in which the spirit appeared at harvest, and which is called upon once more to play its part in the winter rites. This, however, is not a very marked part. A Yorkshire custom of hanging a sheaf on the church door at Christmas is of dubious origin[865]. But Swedish and Danish peasants use the grain of the ‘last sheaf’ to bake the Christmas cake, and both in Scandinavia and Germany the ‘Yule straw’ serves various superstitious purposes. It is scattered on barren fields to make them productive. It is strewed, instead of rushes, upon the house floor and the church floor. It is laid in the mangers of the cattle. Fruit-trees are tied together with straw ropes, that they may bear well and are said to be ‘married[866].’ More naturally the fertilization spirit may be discerned at the approach of winter in such exceptional forms of vegetation as endure the season. In November the apples and the nuts still hang upon their boughs, and these are traditional features in the winter celebrations. Then there are the evergreens. Libanius, Tertullian, and Chrysostom tell how on the Kalends the doors of houses throughout the Roman empire were crowned with bay. Martin of Braga forbade the ‘pagan observance’ in a degree which found its way into the canon law. The original _strena_ which men gave one another on the same day for luck was nothing but a twig plucked from a sacred grove; and still in the fifth century men returned from their new year auguries laden with _ramusculi_ that they might thereafter be laden with wealth[867]. It is not necessary to dwell upon the surviving use of evergreens in the decoration at Christmas of houses and churches[868]. The sacredness of these is reflected in the taboo which enjoins that they shall not be cast out upon the dust-heap, but shall, when some appropriate day, such as Candlemas, arrives, be solemnly committed to the flames[869]. Obviously amongst other evergreens the holly and the ivy, with their clustering pseudo-blossoms of coral and of jet, are the more adequate representatives of the fertilization spirit[870]; most of all the mistletoe, perched an alien visitant, faintly green and white, amongst the bared branches of apple or of oak. The mistletoe has its especial place in Scandinavian myth[871]: Pliny records the ritual use of it by the Druids[872]; it is essential to the winter revels in their amorous aspect; and its vanished dignities still serve, here to bar it from, there to make it imperative in, the edifices of Christian worship[873]. A more artificial embodiment of the fertilization spirit is the ‘Christmas tree’ _par excellence_, adorned with lights and apples, and