How to Wassail Apple Trees on the 12th Night of Christmas

In England, tonight, there’s an ancient custom - an old pagan ritual - that involves waking up the apple cider trees with wassailing on the 12th night of Christmas.

The written folklore around wassailing says that if you wassail apple trees on January 5th, the 12th day after Christmas, you’ll reap a bountiful harvest in the year.

Apples, including other fruits like peaches, pears, plums, and cherries, fall under the rose plant family.

Now, Cider apples are not great eating apples. They tend to be small, not especially attractive, and bittersweet - which may be why Benjamin Franklin famously said,

“It’s bad to eat apples. It is better to turn them all into cider.”

If you’ve ever bobbed for apples and wondered why apples float - it’s because they’re made up of 25 percent air.

Thus, it takes roughly 36 apples to make a single gallon of apple cider.

And do you store your apples in a bowl on the table? If so, bear in mind that apples can ripen up to ten times faster when stored at room temperature instead of being kept in the fridge.  

Although it takes most apple trees, on average, four to five years to produce fruit, an average tree yields 840 pounds of fruit once it starts producing.

Now, wassail means “good health,” by wassailing the apple trees, you wish for good tree health, fertility, and productivity.

Tonight's wassail tradition involves many elements.

Someone dressed as a Green Man - a man of the earth - usually leads the festivities.

There’s the crowning of a King and Queen of the wassail.

Then, the King and Queen lead the wassailers to the orchard or a special apple tree.  

At the tree, cider is poured on the soil around the tree, a symbolic return of the fruit's blessing. Then, bread is dipped in cider and left on the branches for the robins and other creatures in nature.

Finally, wassailers toast the tree with a traditional song:

Old apple tree we wassail thee

And hope that thou will bear

For the Lord doth know

Where we shall be

Come apples another year.

For to bloom well

And to bear well - so merry let us be

Let every man take off his hat

And shout out to the old apple tree.

For to bloom well

And to bear well so merry let us be

Let every man take off his hat

And shout out to the old apple tree.

 

Chant:

Old Apple tree, we wassail thee,

And hope that thou will bare

Hatfuls! Capfuls! Three-bushel bagfuls!

And a little heap under the stairs!

Hip Hip Hooray! Hip Hip Hooray! Hip Hip Hooray!

Then there’s the final step in a thorough wassail of an apple tree: clanging pots and pans, hooting and hollering, and shooting off cap guns and shotguns to scare away all the evil spirits.