“Wassailing or how I turned an ancient tradition into a modern excuse for a party”

Drinking beer is good for you. Scientists, always on the lookout for those nasty disease causing “radicals”, have apparently isolated a chemical compound found in hops which is used in the brewing process. That compound may help prevent some forms of cancer.
Of course, the scientists are not advocating that everyone run out to Canal’s to stock their medicine cabinets with thirty packs of their favorite suds. But the eggheads may not object to your taking a healthy sip of “spiked” eggnog this holiday season.
Toasting one’s health is a great holiday tradition and the practice is also responsible for producing one of the English language’s great words: wassailing.
That word is a favorite of mine and one I put to active use as much as possible this time of year since it doesn’t fit any other time of year. For instance, one does not wassail at the back yard barbecue over July 4th weekend although many folks participating in those events do some sailing, often with three sheets to the wind, another old favorite expression.
The word wassail is applied specifically to the holiday season. It comes from the olde English “waes hael”, meaning “be in good health”. Although not many of those olde English practioners of the art lived to be particularly old by modern standards. Hint: you know it’s “old” when letters are arbitrarily added onto words often evidencing the typist’s particular advanced wassailed condition.
It was actually those early globetrotters, the Saxons who introduced the custom of greeting perfect strangers at holiday season during one of their invasions of Britain during the Middle Ages. The holidays were the one time of year when they weren’t burning and plundering and otherwise causing those same strangers to be poor health.
By the 12th century, the Saxons had been pretty much assimilated into the English countryside so it was up to the Danes, the next round of raiders and plunderers to visit merry old England, to liquefy the customary toast. And so, wassail assumed a double meaning becoming the drink with which to make the toast.
When they first arrived in England, the Danes acted the way graduating high school seniors turned loose for a week in the Wildwoods used to act in the days before condos. The Danes would noisily rampage from village to village, breaking furniture and jumping off third story motel balconies into castle moats, usually brandishing torches and swords for added effect.
It all stopped during when special time of the year came ‘round to celebrate goodwill to all. That’s when they went wassailing. The Danes added to the festivity of the occasion by carrying huge bowls filled with interesting ingredients which they shared with much-relieved locals. At one party the monster Grendel showed up and got a little rowdy before Beowulf the Bouncer flagged him, beginning one of the longest running stories in western literature. (No photo available so I took the liberty of substituting the Goya painting...you get the idea)
The bowls boiled over with hot spiced ale, apples, eggs, sugar, cream, entrails of a dragon. Basically, the wassail bowl held whatever stuff was left over from that fall’s harvest and the gang’s latest marauding mission.
Of course, we don’t quaff concoctions laced with ground up eye of newt in these enlightened days. Today’s toned down wassail comes in cardboard cartons and plastic half gallon jugs from the freezer at the corner Wawa. While the Wawa parking lot can be a dicey place, especially in the morning when everyone rushing to work drops by to get their caffeine fixes, there is not much danger in wassailing these days.
However there’s still the toast, and the sentiment behind the toast. So hoist your carton of egg nog with me and “drink hail” in the spirit of the season. And if you feel like getting scientific and rout a few of those nasty radicals, you may wish to indulge in something a bit stronger.
* *