Book of Days

SEVENTH DAY of CHRISTMAS:
New Year’s Day

The hour is late. We were up much longer than we should have been, eating New Year’s Eve zeppole with the family. With sincere apologies, I must get to bed, but before I do, I offer you the gift of last year’s Convivio Book of Days chapter for this Seventh Day of Christmas. Here we begin the six remaining days, all crossed over the threshold of the new year. You’ll awake to a much quieter celebration of wassailing the apple trees (but indeed you can wassail whatever tree you want; we haven’t any apple trees in Lake Worth). You’ll find these remaining days of Christmas growing more and more contemplative and quiet… at least until Yule’s boisterous closing at Twelfth Night. And so good night… and enjoy this short piece. If you can, make the wassail. It’s delicious.

It is an old custom on New Year’s Day to toast each other, as well as the apple trees in the orchard. The toast is “Wassail!” and the drink is wassail, too, and here’s a recipe for a good wassail: Pour the contents of two large bottles of beer or ale (about 4 pints) into a pot and place it on the stove to heat slowly. Add about a half cup sugar and a healthy dose of mulling spices. (If you don’t have mulling spices on hand, you can use cinnamon sticks and whole cloves… though the mulling spices lend a more interesting flavor.) Add a half pint each of orange juice and pineapple juice, as well as the juice of a large lemon. Peel and slice two apples and place the apple slices into the pot, too. Heat the brew but don’t let it boil, then pour the heated wassail into a punchbowl to serve.

Steaming punches like this were quite popular in olden times, even here in the States, and I think it’s about time we bring these festive drinks back. It’s with just such drinks that one gets to use hearty words like “Huzzah!” and “Wassail!” Wassail comes to us from the Old English Wes Hel: “Be of good health!” To really keep the custom, share the wassail with those in attendance but also take the steaming bowl out to the orchard and toast the apple trees and share some with the oldest or biggest tree in the grove. Some folks pour the wassail on the trunk of the tree, while others dip the lower branches into the wassail bowl, and others may place cider-soaked toast or cake in the branches of the tree. All of which are invocations of magic meant to encourage a good crop of apples next summer.

Most wassailing is done at the noon hour, but there’s no reason not to do it later in the day or in the evening. The apple trees won’t mind. Happy New Year! Wes Hel!

Image: A color plate from Warne’s Model Housekeeper: A Manual of Domestic Economy in All Its Branches, London: Frederick Warne, 1882. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons. The wassail bowl is there, along with other features of the Yuletide season.