Why it’s time to bring back wassailing

Before the Industrial Revolution shrank Christmas celebrations to two days, many workers across rural England might have spared a minute or two over Christmastide to bring out the family wassail bowl. Wassailing – sometimes in houses, sometimes in apple orchards – was a ceremonial toast to the health of friends, family and neighbours, or a ritualised routing of the bad spirits that lurk among fruit trees. Orchard wassailing, intended to guarantee bumper crops in the year ahead, was a rambunctious affair of gunshots, the banging together of trays and buckets and the blowing of cow horns (to scare away evil spirits), singing, drinking and bonfires. Amid the bucket-banging, harvesters found time to bow deeply in front of their chosen trees, which they afterwards toasted in cider, taking care to pour a little on to the tree roots.

In other instances, wassailing seems to have formed an element of a festive house party.