RHS A-Z encyclopedia of garden plants. United Kingdom: Dorling Kindersley. 2008. p.1136. ISBN 978-1405332965. Christians have identified a wealth of symbolism in its form. The sharpness of the leaves help to recall the crown of thorns worn by Jesus; the red berries serve as a reminder of the drops of blood that were shed for salvation; and the shape of the leaves, which resemble flames, can serve to reveal God's burning love for His people. Combined with the fact that holly maintains its bright colors during the Christmas season, it naturally came to be associated with the Christian holiday. [43] Ian Kevin Huntley was born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, on 31 January 1974, the first of two sons born to Kevin Huntley and his wife, Lynda ( née Nixon). [158] The Huntley family were working class and at the time of the birth of their first child, lodged with Lynda's parents in Grimsby. Following the birth of their second child, Wayne, in August 1975, the family moved into a rented property in Immingham, where Huntley attended school. [159]

In February 1999, Huntley met 22-year-old Maxine Carr in a Grimsby nightclub. On this occasion, Carr had been drinking with a former boyfriend named Paul Selby when Huntley—a casual acquaintance of Selby—approached the two and initiated a conversation. [196] According to Carr, she was "instantly attracted" to Huntley's self-confident and pleasant persona, and agreed to begin dating him that same evening. [162] Within four weeks of their acquaintance, [197] she had moved into Huntley's Barton-upon-Humber flat, and the couple informed relatives of their eagerness to start a family. [198] Shortly thereafter, the couple moved to a ground-floor flat in Scunthorpe, where Huntley formally proposed to Carr in June 1999. [199] Having discovered the children's clothes at Soham Village College, [82] police decided to arrest Huntley and Carr. Both were arrested on suspicion of abduction and murder at 4:30a.m. on 17 August. [105] Investigators had stated on 7 August they strongly believed the children had been abducted, [39] and announced their strong suspicions that both girls had been murdered on this date. [106] [107] Hollies are often used for hedges; the spiny leaves make them difficult to penetrate, and they take well to pruning and shaping. [36] Many hundreds of hybrids and cultivars have been developed for garden use, among them the very popular " Highclere holly", Ilex × altaclerensis ( I. aquifolium × I. perado) and the "blue holly", Ilex × meserveae ( I. aquifolium × I. rugosa). [37] The cultivars I. × meserveae Blue Prince = 'Conablu' and Blue Princess = 'Conapri' [38] have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. [39] [40] Another hybrid is Ilex × koehneana, with the cultivar 'Chestnut Leaf'. [41] Culture [ edit ] Traditional Christmas card with holly and mistletoe. Circa 1880s By the second week of the children's disappearance, Huntley had become an unofficial spokesman for the community of Soham. His explanation for this was that he wanted to convey to the media the frustration and despair the community was feeling. [89] In one interview with Sky News correspondent Jeremy Thompson during the second week of the search, he claimed to be holding on to a "glimmer of hope" [61] the children would be found safe and well, and that he had last seen the girls walking in the direction of a local library. [69]In a reference to Huntley's claims both girls' deaths had been accidental, Latham stated that "only one person knows what happened" after the friends entered his home. [6] He stressed that the cause of death was murder, adding: "Ten-year-old girls don't just drop dead." [82] In reference to Carr's attempts to pervert the course of justice, Latham stated that "as surely as night follows day" the two had conspired to concoct a false alibi to divert suspicion from Huntley, [82] but warned the jury Carr could only be convicted of assisting an offender if they believed she had known Huntley had murdered the girls, adding that her motive for providing lies to police with reference to the charge of perverting the course of justice was irrelevant. [82] The final criminal allegation against Huntley prior to the Soham murders dates from July 1999. In this instance, a woman was raped and Huntley–by this stage suspected by police as being a serial sex offender–was interviewed. Huntley supplied a DNA sample to assist in their enquiries, with Carr also providing an alibi to support his claims of innocence. The victim of this assault later said that Huntley had not been the perpetrator of her assault. (This case differs from the others as the victim had not identified or named Huntley as being her assailant.) [176] [n 12] In reality, Huntley invited the girls in by claiming Carr would be there but ended up killing them both. Ilex in Latin means the holm-oak or evergreen oak ( Quercus ilex). Despite the Linnaean classification of Ilex as holly, as late as the 19th century in Britain, the term Ilex was still being applied to the oak as well as the holly – possibly due to the superficial similarity of the leaves. [12] [13] The name "holly" in common speech refers to Ilex aquifolium, specifically stems with berries used in Christmas decoration. By extension, "holly" is also applied to the whole genus. The origin of the word "holly" is considered a reduced form of Old English hole(ġ)n, [14] Middle English Holin, later Hollen. [15] [16] Ilex Tourn. ex L." Plants of the World Online. Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. 2021 . Retrieved 5 September 2021.

At both primary and secondary school, Huntley was an average scholar. He was regarded as a loner, an oddball and an attention seeker by his peers, and became a target for bullies. [161] The bullying Huntley endured escalated when he entered Healing Comprehensive School aged 11, resulting in his academic performance waning. Huntley's parents enrolled their son in Immingham Comprehensive at age 13. He was again the target of physical and verbal bullying at this school, but did form a few friendships via a shared interest in computer games. [162] Huntley also enjoyed football, and was an avid supporter of Manchester United. [14] Holly and ivy figure in the lyrics of the " Sans Day Carol". The music was first published by Cecil Sharp. [23] Sir Henry Walford Davies wrote a popular choral arrangement that is often performed at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols and by choirs around the world. Henry VIII wrote a love song Green Groweth the Holly which alludes to holly and ivy resisting winter blasts and not changing their green hue So I am and ever hath been Unto my lady true. Following the conclusion of both counsels' closing arguments, Mr Justice Moses announced the jury would begin their deliberations on 12 December. [146] Convictions [ edit ]In February 2002, Huntley found Carr a part-time job at St Andrew's Primary School, although she lied about her academic qualifications when applying for this position. [191] This employment was initially voluntary work, but Carr later became a teaching assistant in the school's Year 5 class. Wells and Chapman became two of the pupils she taught, [17] and both girls were fond of her. [53] The prosecution contended at Huntley's trial that a likely sexual motive existed for the murders. Testimony from Carr had indicated her suspicions sexual activity had occurred in their home in her absence as, although Huntley had insisted throughout their relationship that Carr perform all domestic chores, she noticed that he had washed the quilts, pillow cases and sheets of their bed in her absence. [14] Pathological evidence retrieved from the bodies indicating at least one of the girls had been subjected to a sexual assault either before or after her murder was not disclosed to the jury at Huntley's trial. The reason for this decision had been that both bodies were too extensively decomposed and damaged by fire to enable a conclusive determination of either the actual cause of death or if either girl had been subjected to a sexual assault. [17] Your tears have never been for them; only for yourself. In your attempts to escape responsibility, in your lies and manipulation ... you have increased the suffering of two families. There is no greater task for the criminal justice system than to protect the vulnerable. There are few worse crimes than your murder of these two young girls. Instead of passages from Bernard Barton, however, and Mary Howitt, we think we could have gathered more from the seventeenth century poets; and especially might larger use have been made of that touchingly simple class of religious ballads, which under the name of carols, &c., is so rife throughout the rural districts, and the humbler quarters of England's great towns. Many of these are only orally preserved, but with a little trouble a large number might be recovered. We have before us at this time a collection of carols printed in the cheapest form, at Birmingham, uniting for the most part extreme simplicity, with distinct doctrinal teaching, a combination which constitutes the excellence of a popular religious literature. From this little volume we will extract one which might well take the place of the passage from Milton for Christmas Day. It is called the "Holly and the Ivy."

A Tapestry of Carols: Maddy Prior / Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band". allmusic. RhythmOne . Retrieved 23 October 2023. The same evening, police conducted a thorough search of both 5 College Close and the grounds of Soham Village College where Huntley worked as a senior caretaker [100] as the couple remained under police watch at separate locations outside Soham. Each room of Huntley's home had evidently been recently and meticulously cleaned [101] with what was later described as being a "lemony" cleaning fluid, [102] but the search of the home revealed many items of "major importance" to the investigation. The evidence and artefacts were not made public at the time, but the items recovered from the school grounds included items of clothing the girls had been wearing when last seen; their charred and cut Manchester United shirts were recovered from a bin in a hangar at Huntley's place of work. [103] [n 9] Fibres recovered from these garments were a precise match to samples retrieved from Huntley's body and clothing, as well as from 5 College Close. His fingerprints were recovered from the bin. [24] On 12 August, police launched an appeal to trace the driver of a four-door, dark green saloon car. A taxi driver stated he had seen him "thrashing his arms" as he struggled with two young girls inside his vehicle as he drove on the A142 south of Soham towards Newmarket around the time that the girls were last seen. This vehicle was last seen turning into the Studlands Park housing estate. [47] Huntley worked as a caretaker in a nearby secondary school, Soham Village College. During his time there he became engaged to Maxine Carr, who was employed as a teaching assistant in Holy and Jessica's school, forming his connection with the girls.Yao, Xin; Tan, Yun-Hong; Liu, Ying-Ying; Song, Yu; Yang, Jun-Bo; Corlett, Richard T. (2016). "Chloroplast genome structure in Ilex (Aquifoliaceae)". Scientific Reports. 6: 28559. Bibcode: 2016NatSR...628559Y. doi: 10.1038/srep28559. PMC 4932625. PMID 27378489.

The genus is distributed throughout the world's different climates. Most species make their home in the tropics and subtropics, with a worldwide distribution in temperate zones. The greatest diversity of species is found in the Americas and in Southeast Asia. Yao, Xin; Song, Yu; Yang, Jun‐Bo; Tan, Yun‐Hong; Corlett, Richard T. (2021). "Phylogeny and biogeography of the hollies ( Ilex L., Aquifoliaceae)". Journal of Systematics and Evolution. 59: 73–82. doi: 10.1111/jse.12567. S2CID 213027259. International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) (2007): 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: Ilex] The second episode airing tomorrow night at the same time, will cover Huntley's downfall as evidence emerges and the truth is revealed to the world.Prior to murdering Wells and Chapman, Huntley had established an extensive record of consensual and unconsensual sexual activity with females—many of whom had been under the age of consent. He would typically use guile or force to achieve his desires. Between 1992 and 2002, he had committed many acts of physical and sexual violence against women and children for which he had been unpunished. [179] The youngest girl Huntley is known to have raped was 12 years old, with another girl he had attempted to rape being 11. [180] [n 13] The complete words of the carol are found in a book review dating from 1849, in which the reviewer suggested using the text of "The Holly and the Ivy" in place of one of the readings found in the book under discussion. [6] The anonymous reviewer introduced the lyrics of carol thus: Police immediately launched an intensive search for the missing children. [21] Over 400 officers were assigned full-time to search for the girls. [22] These officers conducted extensive house-to-house enquiries across Soham; [23] their efforts to search local terrain were supported by hundreds of local volunteers [24] and, later, some United States Air Force personnel stationed at nearby airbases. [25] [n 1]