The word wassail comes from the Norse and old English traditional drinking salute;
‘Was hael’ meaning ‘good health’. The response is ‘Drinc hael!’ or ‘I drink to your health’ – in other words, ‘Cheers’!

Did you wassail? It is the most fashionable outdoor activity this winter, with wassail events taking place across the country, in rural, urban and community orchards of all sizes. What makes this revival so marvellous is that you can wassail any way you like, picking and choosing from a rag-bag of traditions that make the most sense for your orchard and its community.

I have researched and written about wassailing, but there is a lot that we can’t be sure about. Wassailing is a folk custom that can be traced back, in its original form of a drinking toast, to Anglo Saxon times. It became more ritualised from the twelfth century to the sixteenth, and then went through a period where it was not so important, until the Victorians rediscovered it. Although some Victorian commentators (and some modern ones) love to see wassailing as a living remnant of ancient ‘pagan’ rituals, there is no evidence of this. However there are possible connections between the wassail and ancient
forms of tree worship.

Whenever and wherever it started, Wassailing has always taken place between Christmas Eve and Twelfth Night, (using either the Old or New calendar dates, according to local preference). The wassail as a way of sharing a drink became a way of celebrating the end of the twelve days of Christmas. During the Victorian era, the wassail was a folk ritual that was celebrated in prose and image more often than it took place on the ground, but it was certainly a living Christmas custom down in the orchards.

Today you can celebrate as we do at Trumpington with mummers, musicians and a lot of singing and dancing. We sing ‘here we come a wassailing’ and we pour apple juice as an offering to each tree. We also hang toast in the branches – toast was put at the bottom of drinking goblets to act as a sort of a filter, and this is where the expression ‘raising a toast’ comes from. Orchards with more space might consider lighting a bonfire, or putting candles at the base of each tree (safety first) but I think the custom of firing shotguns has probably had its day!