The Christmas spirit finally kicked in as Nettie and I were ordering milky lattes in a hippie-dippy cafe inside a library in the riverside town of Peterborough, New Hampshire, perusing a rack of novelty socks with moose on them and a bulletin board advertising “brass and bells” concerts and candlelight holiday carol strolls. The rain fell heavy on the snow and we piled Teddy’s dirty-clothes hamper, his skateboard, and (for reasons understood only by the 16-year-old himself) a large box of chicken-flavored ramen noodles into the car at Dublin School under a stone-gray sky and drove away south down the White Mountains, through shape-shifting ghosts of fog that hung in the dells, over wet blacktop that at least wasn’t black ice.
The theme song for our road trip home: “Christmas in Prison” by John Prine:
It was Christmas in prison
And the food was real good
We had turkey and pistols
Carved out of wood.
We’ve heard the word “wassail” in Christmas carols, but we’ve forgotten what it was. It was a drinking tradition so old it is mentioned in “Beowulf.” The words “waes hael” meant “be in good health!” in Middle English and were shouted in call and response (like “What do we want?” followed by “Beer!” and “When do we want it?” Answer: “Now!”). The words “waes haeil” apparently come from the Old Norse “ves heill” and it is thought that the drinking cheer of “wassail” — followed by the response “drinkhail” (“drink good health”) — was introduced to Britain by Danish-speaking invaders. By the 12th century, everyone was screaming “wasshail’ and “drink hail!” and taking it be an English tradition. Judging by the rhyme schemes of various surviving carols, it seems to have been pronounced wassle-ing, not wassALE-ing. . . . “Here we come a-wassle-ing!”
But, anyway, wassailing was basically caroling whilst carrying with you a giant bowl of booze. The bowl is referred to in some ancient wassail songs, variously, as made of ash or white oak, and sometimes it is referred to as a “milk pail.” The drink apparently was, in the Middle Ages, white and had eggs beaten into it, more like eggnog or a Tom and Jerry. By the 17th and 18th centuries it was more likely to be ale or wine mulled with crabapples and maybe some expensive ginger, clove, nutmeg, or cinnamon — all the spices we still associate with the red-nosed merry season. According to the website of Colonial Williamsburg, “The practice of floating crisps of bread in the wassail bowl gave rise to our use of ‘toast’ as a drinking salutation.”
This drunken door-to-door happened all over England, for centuries, and came to America with the colonists. We have surviving accounts of reckless and wanton wassailers from Boston to Virginia.
This is one of my favorite topics: Our forgetfulness that life — before we all disappeared inside to watch television alone with our families — was more communal centuries ago. Life was lived out in the street and fields, and on the commons. Markets and fairs. News headlines that come from a crier or bills posted on a wall. Life was less private. So it makes sense that two or three of the truly ancient holiday traditions that made it here to the New World were nightwalking festivities in which carousers went door to door: trick-or-treating in October, then wassailing and mumming (or “mummering”) from Christmas up through Twelfth Night.
Our coastal neighbors in Nantucket and the town of Marblehead, Massachusetts, ignored the Puritan leadership’s brief but famous ban on Christmas. Wassailing and disorder continued unabated in those seaside towns. In Salem on Christmas night in 1679, a group of young rowdies woke up a family named Rowden, who were known for brewing a plum wine called “perry.” The Rowden family was annoyed and told them to go away. Then things turned ugly, according to the Salem town records: “They threw stones, bones, and other things. . . . They beat down much of the daubing in several places and continued to throw stones for an hour and a half with little intermission. They also broke down about a pole and a half of fence, being stone wall, and a cellar, without the house, distant about four or five rods, was broken open through the door, and five or six pecks of apples were stolen.”
In Deerfield in 1794, a shopkeeper named John Birge complained in his account book about the arrival of “Nightwalkers — or rather blockheads” at his establishment about 2 o’clock in the morning, three days before Christmas. Birge refused to open his door. The wassailers broke a windowpane, trying to get in, and carried away food and clothing. Wrote Birge: “I cannot see why it was much better than Burglary!”
I have no reason to believe our East Hampton ancestors were any less rowdy than their nearest coastal neighbors 300 or 350 years ago. In fact, I have a feeling — just a feeling, mind you, an inkling based on intuition and personal inclination, no more — that Christmas was a season of at least a little light misdemeanor-level disorder.
I don’t think I’m alone. Am I?
Just this week, my friend Rick Chapman — who expressly asked me to mention his name in print, and here I am diligently doing so, Rick! — may have seized the occasion of the first snowfall of winter to lure his white-haired Mrs. Claus of a wife, Fran (one of the deacons of the First Presbyterian Church, with a twinkle in her eye even in summer), into the cab of his big pickup for a joyride and may or may not have turned donuts in a circle on the church lawn. Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. I’m not saying he did. I’m just saying maybe.
When it comes to donating their time to completing tasks in the Christmas spirit, like installing lights to illuminate the Wise Men who stand in front of the church’s modest wooden manger, or hefting a cardboard Children’s Nativity Pageant camel with a broken leg down from an attic and into a dumpster, Rick and Fran are among the most generous parishioners, a real Father and Mother Christmas. They are sober people, as far as I know, but the spirit of the ancestral wassail, I’d say, is strong.