The tradition of the wassail has helped brighten the darkest weeks of the year for millennia.
January can feel like one of the longest and darkest months of the British calendar. The festivities and excesses of Christmas are over, leaner times take their place and the sun is at its weakest on these short days following the winter solstice of 21 December. While even for modern society January can feel a trial, it must have felt interminable for those rural communities whose lives revolved so much more closely around the ebb and flow of the seasons and for whom those leaner times were probably very lean indeed.
This combination of longer, darker days and privation sit at the very heart of (which dates back to at least the mid 19th-century but is probably much older) gives us a glimpse of the duality of the very essence of the ancient celebration of the wassail.
