Tonight is Twelfth Night. According to the OED Twelfth Night is the evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of the Epiphany; this was formerly the last day of the Christmas festivities and observed as a time of merrymaking. This is predicated on the medieval custom of starting each new day at sunset, so that Twelfth Night precedes Twelfth Day Which would be Epiphany, 6 January).

Tradition has it that if you don’t take your Christmas decorations down by Twelfth Night they have to stay up all year or you bring bad luck upon yourself. Although there does seem to be a “lease break” at Candlemas (2 February).

In many parts of England, especially the southern cider-making counties, one of the Twelfth Night traditions is Wassailing the apple trees to ensure a good crop the following autumn. In fact the term Wassail, by association, has at least there uses: the celebration of the apple trees, the hot mulled punch which is drunk at such occasions, and as a toast. All derive from the Middle English wæs hæl, meaning literally “good health”. To quote Wikipedia:

In the cider-producing counties […] wassailing refers to a traditional ceremony that involves singing and drinking the health of trees in the hopes that they might better thrive. The purpose of wassailing is to awake the cider apple trees and to scare away evil spirits to ensure a good harvest of fruit in the Autumn. The ceremonies of each wassail vary from village to village but they generally all have the same core elements. A wassail King and Queen lead the song and/or a processional tune to be played/sung from one orchard to the next, the wassail Queen will then be lifted up into the boughs of the tree where she will place toast soaked in Wassail […] as a gift to the tree spirits […] an incantation is usually recited […]

The words of the incantation and any associated carol(s) vary, for instance there is:

Here’s to thee, old apple-tree,
Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow,
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!
Hats-full! Caps-full!
Bushel, bushel sacks-full!
And my pockets full, too! Hurra!

The one I prefer is the ancient Gloucetershire Wassail which begins

Wassail! wassail! all over the town,
Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown;
Our bowl it is made of the white maple tree;
With the wassailing bowl, we’ll drink to thee.

There’s also this Wassail carol, which is more often these days sung as a Christmas carol (which it never was!):

Here we come a wassailing among the leaves so green
Here we come a wandering so fair to be seen
Love and joy come to you and to your wassail too
And the Gods bless you and send you a happy New Year
And the Gods send you a happy New Year
We are not daily beggars that beg from door to door
We are your neighbour’s children whom you have seen before
The Gods bless the master of this house, likewise the mistress, too
And all the little children that round the table go.

Needless to say the details vary from place to place. The Wassail punch may be cider, beer, wine or mead based. As one is thanking and encouraging the apple trees my gut feel is that the punch should be either cider based or contain apple in some other form. I also recall that some traditions use cake rather then toast and some have bonfires. You can also indulge in making a lot of noise (like banging on tin buckets, blowing horns etc.) in order to drive away the evil spirits.

So if you want to go out tonight and wassail your apple tree(s) then as long as you stick to these rough principles, and don’t drink all the punch before the apple trees have their share, you don’t seem to be able to go far wrong. Just remember that if you want to dance round the tree as well, you’d better go deosil (clockwise) but as it is a few days away from full moon you will probably be excused doing so sky-clad — although there is nothing saying you can’t should you wish!

Wassail!