What Exactly is Wassail?

“Father Christmas” standing next to a bowl of wassail as depicted in an 1842 issue of Illustrated London News. Public Domain.

By Jennie Shurtleff

Most Americans have likely heard the opening line of an old-time carol that goes “Here we come a-wassailing,” but what is the wassailing to which these words refer?

Wassail historically took place during the Yuletide season. In British villages, as part of the wassail tradition, people often went from door to door, visiting friends and the local gentry, and at each house they partook in sipping from a communal pot of a drink called wassail. The tradition became known as wassailing, as in the carol “Here We Come A-Wassailing…,” which includes the opening lines below:
 
Here we come a-wassailing
Among the leaves so green;
Here we come a-wand'ring
So fair to be seen.

The drink that was traditionally known as “wassail” was a cider-based drink, that was served hot, and was flavored with spices and liquor. Photo Credit: Jeremy Tarling from London, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

It becomes clear from this song that wassailers expected that the wealthy would give at least a token amount during the holiday season, as one verse states:

“We have got a little purse / Of stretching leather skin; / We want a little of your money / To line it well within.”
 
And a later verse states:  

Good master and good mistress, / While you're sitting by the fire, / Pray think of us poor children / Who are wandering in the mire.

While the Wassail celebrations in towns and cities seems to have centered on drinking and collecting donations, in more rural parts of England that had many orchards and produced cider, the emphasis was more on the trees and paying homage to the trees in hopes of having a good harvest. In these rural areas, the wassailers — often led by a wassail king and queen who were selected from the local population, would march through the various orchards, singing and drinking along the way, in hopes of awakening the trees so that they would produce a bountiful crop. The king and queen often poured cider on the roots of apple trees and hung cider soaked bread from the trees’ branches — with the stated goal being to feed the robins (“good spirits”). In some local traditions, a shotgun was fired over the largest tree in the orchard as a way of ritualistically scaring away any harmful spirits that might be lurking about and that might negatively impact the tree’s productivity.

Woodstock’s Wassail celebration has deviated quite dramatically from these seminal celebrations. There are no communal wassail bowls, wassail kings and queens, or shooting shotguns to scare away evil spirits. Rather, Woodstock's annual Wassail celebration, which began in 1982, was conceived by the Woodstock Area Chamber of Commerce to bring visitors to the area and bolster tourism. The first year of this celebration, carolers strolled the streets, horse-drawn carriages took guests for rides, and entertainment included dances, the Revere Bellringers, and workshops on making wreaths and soaps and cooking holiday treats. 

For the third annual Wassail, held in 1984, the festivities included a special wassail feast at the Woodstock Inn “complete with a court jester and costumed service staff,” a showcase of gift and decorating ideas on the Green, a concert by Rosenschontz, and the Freelance Family singers leading all who wished to join for caroling.

A year later, in 1985, there was a Wassail Cotillion, a fashion show, Wassail’s first torchlight horse and carriage parade (that featured 50-75 riders in historic costumes), and the burning of a Yule log. That year, NBC came to Woodstock to experience Wassail first hand so that they could include the celebration in the network’s holiday special on how communities in the United States celebrate Christmas.

In 2007, the Home and Garden Television channel filmed the Wassail parade and other events so that they could include them in their Christmas special. They also named Woodstock as one of the “Top 10 Christmas Towns” largely because of Woodstock’s Wassail event.

While the name Wassail remains, the traditions have changed. No longer is wassail an agriculturally-based ritual to insure a cider crop, nor is it a local social celebration where people go from door-to-door to exchange holiday wishes with friends and neighbors. Rather, it is an event that draws thousands to Woodstock Village to shop, see costumed horses and riders, listen to music, and attend a host of other events. It will be interesting for those in a hundred years to look back on our current Wassail traditions, some of which may bear the test of time and remain relevant, while others - like the fashion show and cotillion of 1985 - fall out of favor as the interests and expectations of people continue to change.