Every year in January, renowned apple grower John Bunker of Maine gathers friends, neighbors, and local farmers together for a wassail.
John Bunker: The wassail is a super old celebration of the apple and sort of the beginning of the agricultural year, because it's after New Year's. And it's a celebration of the year gone by and the apple crop and also a sort of a kind of nudge to the apple trees to like do it again.
It of course is produce a good crop. Wassailing has a long and storied history that dates back hundreds of years in the UK, to the earliest Anglo-Saxon inhabitants who instructed each other to “was heil” or be in good health. Over the centuries it became a drinking toast—one party would say was heil, the other drink hail—and by medieval times, farmers had adopted the tradition of taking their ale bowls into their barns and fields and drinking to the good health of their crops and animals.
John Bunker: We do this wassail celebration here in the U.S. with the knowledge that we're doing a kind of a well-meaning fake job of what was done traditionally in the UK. But it was traditionally celebrated on the 12th night.
This is the twelfth day after Christmas, in early January. For his annual wassail, John lights a huge bonfire on the edge of the apple orchard around 4pm just before it gets dark. Friends and neighbors arrive with cider and potluck dishes.
John Bunker: We drink and chat with each other and eat and so forth and then at a certain point we have a celebration. We have poems that we read, we sing different songs, some of the songs are songs that some people would recognize even if they don’t know about wassail, they’re old Christmas carol type songs. (sings wassail) etc. And then eventually we have a skit and the skit is around one of the old apple trees, we usually do it around this tree right there, because we can all fit around it. And people play different parts. Some people get up in the apple trees on ladders and they say silly things and we try to scare away the bad bugs and the deer and the porcupines or whatever. And we pour cider on the ground as a sort of a tribute to the tree. And we hang toast soaked in cider on the tree.
This part is a very old tradition—dating back to at least the 13th century when revelers would dip cakes and fine breads in the wassail bowl and then eat them—and eventually this evolved into tying the toasts onto the tree for the birds and to ward off evil spirits—and it’s thought to be where the modern tradition of toasting each other comes from.
Beyond all the tradition and celebration, though, there’s one last reason John thinks every community should host a winter wassail—and that’s to network, to introduce local people who have an interest in agriculture to each other—because farming can be a solitary job.
John Bunker: So part of our job as we see it, aside from celebrating agriculture and celebrating being outdoors, is to be a focal point or a gathering point where people can meet one another.
Tis the season.
Here’s a link to learn more about the history of wassailing:
https://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/Foundation/journal/Holiday06/wassail.cfm
Here’s a link to learn more about John Bunker and his apple trees: https://www.outonalimbapples.com/
Here’s a recipe from Fedco Trees (a division of Fedco Seed Company), which John Bunker helped found, for wassail the drink!
Wassail for two people
1 large apple
15 to 20 whole cloves
3 cups apple cider
3/4 cup orange juice
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 tablespoon light brown sugar
2 cinnamon sticks
1. Stud the apple by sticking the cloves all the way around the apple.
2. In a medium size pot, combine remaining ingredients, and gently lower the studded apple into the pot and simmer on the stove for roughly 30 minutes. (Use a non-reactive metal or glass pot)
3. Serve warm with an extra cinnamon stick and slice of orange.
4. For extra kick, grown up humans can add a shot of brandy or rum.
