Before there was caroling, there was wassailing — and if you’d met a band of wassailers on a dark December night in 1600, you might not have opened the door.
The word itself is a toast: from the Old Norse and Old English greeting wæs hæil — “be well,” “be in good health.” The proper reply was drinc hæil: “drink well.” Somewhere between those two phrases lies one of the oldest, strangest, and most delightfully rowdy roots of the modern Christmas.
Two traditions in one bowl
Wassailing was really two customs sharing a name — and a steaming bowl of spiced ale or cider.
House-visiting wassail was the people’s version: bands of villagers — often the poorer folk — carried a decorated wassail bowl door to door, singing to the household and offering a drink from the bowl in exchange for food, coins, or something warm from the cellar. It was festive, but it had an edge. Some traditional wassail songs are startlingly direct: the singers announce what they’d like, and one famous carol still carries the wassailers’ cheerful ultimatum — “we won’t go until we get some.” At midwinter, the world’s usual order loosened: the well-off opened their doors and their pantries, and the visitors blessed the house in return.
Orchard wassailing was stranger and older still. In the cider country of England’s West Country, farmers went out on Twelfth Night to sing to their apple trees — pouring cider on the roots, hanging toast in the branches for the robins (or the spirits, depending on whom you asked), and making an enormous racket with pots and shouts to scare bad luck out of the orchard and wake the trees for spring. It’s agricultural magic, plain and simple: a blessing sung to next year’s harvest. And it never fully died — orchard wassails are still held in Somerset and elsewhere every January.
From threat to sweetness: how wassailing became caroling
Over the centuries, the house-visiting wassail was slowly tamed. The drink got politer, the songs got holier, and the “give us figgy pudding or else” spirit mellowed into neighborly serenading. The Victorians — busy renovating every corner of Christmas — completed the transformation: door-to-door wassailing became door-to-door caroling, with the bowl swapped for a songbook and the ultimatums swapped for good wishes.
But listen closely and the old custom is still there. “Here We Come A-Wassailing” survives word for word. The figgy pudding demand survives inside “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Even our habit of toasting the season — raising a glass and wishing health — is wassail in modern dress.
A tradition worth reviving (gently)
You don’t need an orchard. A pot of mulled cider, a few neighbors, one old song — that’s a wassail. The custom’s whole point was that goodwill is something you carry to someone’s door, not something you post. That may be the most radical Christmas idea of all.
Sources & Further Reading
- Colonial Williamsburg Journal — Wassailing Through History
- World History Encyclopedia — The History of Christmas Carols
- Traditional texts: “Here We Come A-Wassailing” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” (19th-century printings of much older folk songs)
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