Thousands of Couples Gather Under the Mistletoe in Washington, D.C. to Kiss Their Way Into a New World Record

A total of 1,435 couples almost tripled the Guinness World Record for the largest number of people kissing beneath the mistletoe

Ella Feldman - Daily Correspondent

December 19, 2025 9:53 a.m.

The crowd stood beneath a large mistletoe installation for the world record attempt on December 13. DowntownDC Business Improvement District (BID)

Thousands of people and many, many sprigs of a certain festive shrub later, the nation’s capital now holds the world record for most couples kissing underneath the mistletoe.

On December 13, 1,435 couples gathered in downtown Washington, D.C. under a massive mistletoe installation to kiss simultaneously for five seconds. In doing so, they nearly tripled the Guinness World Record previously set in 2019 in St. Louis, where 480 couples had locked lips.

“Events like this bring people together in such a memorable, joyful way and show the true vibrancy and energy in the city that we love,” Gerren Price, president and CEO of the DowntownDC Business Improvement District, says in a statement.

Breaking a record takes a lot of planning and coordination, Michael Empric, the adjudicator from Guinness World Records, told WTOP’s Jimmy Alexander on the day of the event.

The Secret Life of Mistletoe: Love, Legends and ... Parasites

“You need to get people to your attempt. You need that real mistletoe to kiss under, and everyone needs to be in a couple,” Empric said. “You can’t just come in as a solo participant. So, there’s a lot of hoops you have to jump through, but they did it today.”

The smooching took place underneath a ten-foot-long sphere of shrubbery and ribbons suspended in the air, but each couple also held their own sprig of mistletoe above their heads.

People have been kissing under mistletoe for centuries. Historians aren’t sure exactly when the tradition started, but the earliest written reference to it comes from the 1784 musical-comedy Two for One, Bettina Arnold, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, tells NPR’s Scott Neuman.

The song lyric celebrates “what good luck has sent ye / and kiss beneath the mistletoe.”

Quick fact: Washington Irving on mistletoe

Around 1820, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow author wrote of “the mistletoe with its white berries hung up to the imminent peril of all the pretty housemaids.”

Long before it was a symbol of romance, mistletoe represented fertility. The Druids, high-ranking Celtic priests, revered the plant, which blossoms even during winter’s coldest months. For centuries, the plant has also played a role in European medicine. The Greeks and Romans used it to treat everything from menstrual cramps to epilepsy, History’s Evan Andrews wrote in 2013.

Mistletoe is a hemi-parasitic plant, meaning it uses photosynthesis for its own food but also steals nutrients by latching onto other plants. Its etymology isn’t as romantic as you might think**.**

“The word mistletoe comes from the Old English misteltan, with tan meaning ‘twig’ and mistel meaning, well, ‘mistletoe.’ (Middle English speakers apparently confused tan as the plural of ta, ‘toe,’ which is how we ultimately get mistletoe),” according to Dictionary.com. “As for the roots of mistel, that etymology is obscure, though the word has cousins in Germanic languages. Because mistletoe can be spread through birds’ feces, it is possible that mistel derives from an obsolete, Germanic-derived noun mix, meaning ‘dung, filth.’”

The plant’s etymology may not scream love, but for at least one couple, breaking a world record by kissing under a mistletoe sprig was an opportunity for romance.

“I feel like we have grown so much together as a couple in the past eight years and this seemed like a great way to continue romanticizing our journey,” Anna Vallejo, who attended the event with her boyfriend, tells the Washington Post’s Emma Uber.

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