Wassail
The common bowl—vast in extent—filled with an alcoholic mixture of varying composition depending on the community. Wassail was an expression of community, for the ingredients were collected prior to the holiday, with young women parading through a town calling upon neighbors to contribute ingredients:
Wassail, wassail, over the town
Our toast is white, our ale is brown
Our bowl is made of the maplin tree
We be good folk all and drink to thee.
The word wassail from early Middle English “wæs hæil” meant “be in good health,” and I am sure those of you with trepidations about communicable diseases shudder at the notion of a winter-time guzzle in a common container. It was a sure way to catch whatever flu or cold was circulating. You can invert your trepidation. The Wassail Bowl was the quickest way to build up communal immunity.
Wassail was a New Year’s ritual that migrated to Christmas in some locales. The collection of ingredients took place New Year’s Eve. The ingredients included alcohol (ale, or wine, or cider), spices of various sorts, fruits if they were available. Honey or some other sweetener became an additive after 1500. Drinking from the common bowl could be a rite of family solidarity, or communal amity. It was sometimes quaffed on the final stroke of Midnight at a New Year’s Eve Party. In the United States the fashion for Wassail waxed and waned. In the 19th century it enjoyed a revival among gentlemen’s clubs and public entertainments where the Temperance Movement held little sway. Certain of the metropolitan clubs had salaried chefs trained in mixology.
Here is a gilded age club recipe for the contents of the club bowl: One twelfth ounce of mace, one-third ounce of cloves, one-quarter ounce of cardamom, one-quarter ounce of cinnamon, one-twelfth ounce of nutmeg, one-third ounce of ginger, and nearly one-half ounce of coriander seeds put into a cupful of water over the fire and allowed to simmer half an hour or longer. Add to this four bottles of sherry and one and one-half pounds of loaf sugar and when raging hot pour in the yolks of twelve eggs and the whites of six, well beaten, stirring briskly all the time until the mixture becomes quite frothy, which is the signal to drop in six soft-roasted peeled apples Serve immediately. [“Wassail in Favor,” Philadelphia Inquirer (December 14, 1902), 4].
The Old Saxons did not employ sherry in their potables. Ale or Mead served as the base, spices, honey, bread (often toasted), and roasted apples. The mixture was heated. Securing a roasted apple while quaffing was regarded as a mark of fortune.
Americans were more attuned to the punch bowl than the wassail bowl as the vessel of sociability. The contents of the punch bowl were decidedly more potent than the wassail. Brandy, or whiskey, or rum supplied the buzz. Yet there was a moment in the late 19th centuries among to Anglophile upper crust of America’s cities when Olde English Christmas became the thing: ancient carols, the 12 days, yule log, the Christmas Eve vigil, and the wassail (borrowed from New Year’s Day). These Christmas antiquarians had surprising clout in American newspapers, so articles on Wassail appeared with some frequency in the 1890-1919 period. Then came Prohibition and the sale of alcohol became a Federal Crime. Wassail went to into abeyance, perhaps appearing using sweet cider.
A fair amount of nonsense became mixed with wassail lore—perhaps none hoarier than the claim that the original wassail bowl was fashioned from the skull of an enemy. One practice that sounds equally improbable, yet is an authentic survival of pre-Christian rite is wassailing trees—sprinkling fruit trees with a beverage made from the fruit of said tree.
Wassaile the trees, that they may beare
You many a plumbe and many a peare
For more or less fruite they will bring,
As you do give them wassailing. [“Old Saxon Cheer,” Capital (Dec 25, 1894), 8]
It is worth remembering that the sloe was the only fruit Native to the British Isles. Apples, Pears, Plums, and Medlars were brought in the Islands with the Romans. So the honoring of trees with libations was not Druidic or Celtic, but pagan Roman in inspiration.
What of the bowls themselves? Those carved from wood usually bore the name wassail bowl. Those cast or crafted from metal often bore the name Loving Cup or Grace Cup. A fair number of vessels predating 1700 survive in the possession of Universities, Guilds, and Municipalities. The Lord Mayor of London’s Cup, passed about to inaugurate his famous feasts, was the most famous communal vessel in Britain. But large turned wooden bowls are common enough in British antique stores, though most date from the 17th century.
While I’ve partaken of wassail at holiday parties, the deeper tradition in the South has always been the Christmas Bowl of eggnog, a creation of early 19th-century Virginia.
It makes me thirsty to think about.