Twelfth Night

Have you taken down your Christmas decorations today? If they are still up then you most certainly risk bad luck upon yourself in the coming year.

However if they were still up today you may well have left it too late. The actual date of twelfth night appears to be ambiguous.

For many twelfth night actually takes place on the evening of January 5th and it appears that the celebration of twelfth night on January 6th is a fairly recent tradition.

In fact twelfth night used to celebrate the end of the winter festival and was associated with a big feast and merrymaking. The evening was accompanied with the consumption of copious amounts of punch called wassail. Traditionally wassail is made by heating cider with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger topped with pieces of toast.

http://static.tastykitchen.com/recipes/files/2010/12/wassail.jpg


You can find a recipe here posted by the BBC Victorian Christmas

In some southern counties of England the tradition of wassailing involved the drinking of wassail and accompanying dancing in the apple orchards. This tradition was thought to please the tree spirits and ensure that the years harvest would be successful. In fact if you would like to try out a bit of wassailing you can visit Burnham-on-Sea next Saturday and join in (click here for details).

 

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