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Have we missed out on wassailing ?
The folklore answer to this question depends on what is meant by wassailing.
The word is derived from the anglo-saxon, ‘wes hál,’ which means to ‘be whole’ or ‘be of good health’ and is a term that could be used throughout the year when drinking a toast to a friend. ‘Good health,’ its present day counterpart, is certainly not restricted in use and is undoubtedly in use every day.
Wassailing the fruit trees, particularly the apple, was never set by our ancestors to relate to Christmas. Their pagan, pre-Christian, ceremony of appealing to the Gods of Nature considerably precedes the 5th century adoption by the church of Christmas as the birthday of Christ.
Some attribute this tree wassailing with a connection to the week-long Roman festival of Saturnalia in December or to their Kalends of January when Roman homes were adorned with laurels and bay.
Do they really believe that our ancestors couldn’t think for themselves ?
Historian are beginning to realise that the ancient Britons, BC, were not the as dumb as they’ve previously made them out to be.
Farmers and breeders of livestock then, as now, respected nature and lived with it. Seasons, marked by the passing of the short days of winter to long days of summer is as natural today as it ever was.
Only its place in the calendar has taken our attention away from the time our ancestors would have noted the shortest day of winter, the solstice.
Before twelve days were removed to ‘correct’ the calendar, with eleven shorn off at a stroke 1752, they would have witnessed the shortest day on what to us would be the 3rd or 4th of January, remarkably close to Old Christmas Eve celebrated in later centuries on January 5th.
A period of celebration to mark the coming of better weather in the spring was certainly the time to remind the Gods to waken the fruit trees to ensure a good crop.
Seven hundred years BC the Romans had a ten-month calendar and people here that were trading with lands across the channel had apple trees long before the Romans invaded these shores.
Remove our fixation with the control of people by dates and days and it becomes easier to see that all our ancestors had, or needed, was a recognition of the solstice to give them a reason to celebrate the coming of spring and a need to communicate with trees that would provide good fruit for them, if perhaps, asked kindly to do so.
When ‘Old’ Christmas Day, which was always regarded as a normal working day until the latter part of the 19th century, was celebrated on what is now January 6th ‘Old’ Twelfth Night arrived on the 17th; which may surprise those who claim January 6th as our present Twelfth Night.
Dates and celebrations on dates are what we make them. If, however, we want to tune in on what our ancestors celebrated, as far as wassailing is concerned just take a drink from anyone sincerely wishing you good health, at any time, but wait for wassailing until the 17th of January at least.
There are likely to celebrations about then art Combe-in-Teignhead, Devon at Carhampton, Somerset, and definitely on that day at Kingston Seymour Orchards Group, North Somerset, 01934 834991 and Somerset’s Rural Life Museum, 7- 9:30pm, with music and refreshments, 01458 831197.
Roy Radford
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