KISSING GEORGE WASHINGTON Part One

I gott'a admit, there was one lesson in military science that General George Washington never learned – Keep It Simple, Stupid. Consider George's plan for his greatest victory: First, 3,000 men under Lieutenant Colonel John Cadwalader would slip across the icy Delaware river near Bristol, Pennsylvania, and threaten the redcoats and their hired mercenaries (the Hessians) billeted around Bordentown, New Jersey. Once the British were distracted, Washington himself would lead 2, 500 men across McKonkey's Ferry, 15 miles to the north, and march 7 miles south to attack the 1,500 Hessian troops camped at Trenton, while 700 militiamen under General James Ewing would cross just south of  Trenton, and block the Hessian's retreat.   If all these moving parts managed to work, Washington plan would be judge brilliant. Luckily for Washington, it did not work.

There was no reason why it should. The Continental Army, which had numbered 20,000 men outside New York in August, by Friday, 20 December, 1776, were reduced to less than 6,000 exhausted starving, freezing, dispirited and nearly naked men, huddled on the south bank of the Delaware River, . Washington admitted most of his men were “so thinly clad as to be unfit for service.” Desertions were melting the army into slush, and half of the enlistments were up on New Year's Day, “I rather think the design of General. Howe is to possess himself of Philadelphia this winter,” Washington warned Congress, “and in truth I do not see what is to hinder him...”. In February the Delaware River would likely freeze over, and Howe's 30,000 men could march across the ice into the American capital. Knowing this, the bickering Continental Congress had already retreated to Baltimore. It all made Washington's grandiose plan seem a pipe dream. But Washington did have a few advantages.

First, there was the Delaware River (above) , named after Thomas West, the Third Baron De la Ware. Iron ore and grains were carried by 40 foot long flat bottom Durham boats on the upper river as it cut a gap southeastwards through the last ridges of the Appalachian mountains to the 8 foot falls at Trenton. The river turned southward 20 miles later at Bordentown, before the last 30 mile reach to the Philadelphia docks. When Washington retreated across the mile wide river he had gathered every Durham boat capable of carrying artillery or cavalry onto the south bank, his side of the river, for seventy miles up stream. And with American defenses dug in at every ford, it left General Howe the choice of either building a new fleet, or waiting for the freeze.

The second item in Washington's favor was the well known and well hated Tory, John Honeyman, a butcher and weaver from Griggstown, New Jersey. In mid-December Honeyman was captured and dragged before General Washington for a personal interrogation The truth was, Honeyman was a double agent, a spy for Washington. In private the butcher informed his spymaster that General Howe was not waiting for the river to freeze. On Saturday, 14 December Howe had ordered his 20,000 regulars to disperse into winter quarters in northern New Jersey, where the accommodations and accommodating companionship were plentiful. That left 10,000 Hessian's in a string of outposts within mutually supporting distance across southern New Jersey.

Then on Saturday, 21 December 1776, the amazing John Honeyman somehow managed to escape Washington's clutches and cross the Delaware, where he sought refuge with Colonel Johann Gottlieb

Rall, commanding the three regiments of Hessians at Trenton. While being congratulated for his escape, Honeyman assured Rall the Americans could not possibly mount any operations until spring. This confirmed Rall's personal appraisal of the undisciplined Americans, and convinced him he needed no trenches to defend Trenton. “Let them come!”, he boasted, “We'll at them with the bayonet!” But also on that Saturday, 400 Philadelphia militia surprised a Scottish redcoat picket company at the tiny Petticoat Bridge, north of Mount Holly, New Jersey.

The Scotsmen fell back on their regiment, billeted a mile north in a village called Blackhorse, and they alerted the man Howe had left in charge of most of southern New Jersey, General Count Carl Emil Ulrich von Donop (above). The Count was a competent soldier, and ambitious enough to despise Colonel Rall, who had been left out of his chain-of-command. Disturbed by the rebels growing boldness, von Donop roused his two Hessian regiments at Bordentown and put them onto the road, south to Blackhorse. Normally, faced with such an active response, the American militia would have scattered, but their commander, a Virginian Colonel named Samuel Griffin, got a visit from General Washington's aid, Joseph Reed, who urged the militia to hang on for a little while. But, Washington also warned Reed, not to share why he was asking Griffin's men to make this effort,  ..as the discovery of it may prove fatal to us".

Although ill, Griffin was willing. So on 22 December, when von Dunop's 2,000 men crossed over the Petticoat Bridge and pushed toward Mount Holly (center, right), the militia stayed in contact, even trading some long range artillery fire. But they avoided a full fight.  The dilatory shooting continued into the short day of 23 December. The Hessian planned a full assault for the morning of 24 December, but Griffin sensed the blow and retreated during the night. Frustrated, von Donop would decide to tempt the Americans and remain in Mount Holly another day. He was also, charged one of his disgruntled subordinates, enjoying the company of an attractive local widow, who might even have been seamstress Betsy Ross. Whatever the truth, the skirmish had drawn von Dunop a full day's march south of Bordentown, even farther away from Trenton then Washington's diversion was intended to draw him.

That same Monday, 23 December, General Washington (above)  was at his modest headquarters about 10 miles north of Trenton, in William Keith's Pennsylvania farm house. In the afternoon he was visited by the handsome, urban and catty Doctor Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and distinguished member of the Continental Congress. Dr. Rush found Washington moody. “While I was talking to him”, Rush wrote later, “I observed him to play with his pen and ink upon several small pieces of paper. One of them by accident fell upon the floor near my feet. I was struck with the inscription upon it. “Victory or Death.” Rush decided the general was depressed, and probably would have prescribed his favorite treatment, a bleeding. Luckily for the United States, Washington could not spare the time to open a vein.

The spirits of Washington's men was improving. It had snowed, the cloud cover moderating the overnight temperatures, and a supply of long promised blankets from Virginia had finally reached the army. The colonists were getting a first painful lesson, a lesson half of them would have to relearn in 70 years - that a nation of 50 independent sovereign states, is not a nation. A year earlier, the Continental Congress had established a daily ration as one pound each of meat and bread, a pint of milk and a quart of beer or cider per man. But the rations were almost never met. Without an internal system of roads, or a navy, the colonies occupied by the army, were really the only ones that could supply the army. And they would always lack the resources. Washington's little army was in such terrible condition, that a few blankets could raise the spirits of the men. Change was on the wind.

Around noon, on Christmas Eve, 1776, Washington called his commanders to a meeting in his headquarters, and it was only now that he informed them of his plan. The next evening the army would cross the river at McKonkey’s Ferry, at the mouth of Knowles' creek. The Delaware River was only 300 yards wide here, and Washington calculated it would take about six hours to carry 2,500 men to the New Jersey shore.

Once reformed, the army would march 7 miles south to Trenton, surprising Rall's Hessians before dawn and trapping them against General James Ewing 700 militia, which would cross after midnight at the Trenton ferry. The Hessians at Bordentown would be prevented from reinforcing by Colonel John Cadwalader's force. After Trenton was captured, joined by General Ewing's 700 militia, the victorious army would march the 13 miles north to Princeton, and attack the British force there under Major General James Grant.

It was a bold plan. It took account of Colonel Rall's unprepared position at Trenton and General Howe's dispersed forces. But it could not allow for the huge storm winding up off the coast of the Carolinas, and about to slam into the American army.

- 30 -

WE COME A CAROLING

I strongly suspect that the 6^th century Christian theologian Benedict of Nursia was completely tone deaf. Its the only way I can explain why his Rules of Saint Benedict left Christianity trying to tap its toes to the monophonic Gregorian Chant – lavishly described as a melody with no harmony. This was music invented to pacify the spirit, almost to put it to sleep, to pledge devotion with no emotion - and in Latin, which limited its popularity. It would take another 800 years, until Francis of Assisi, for Christianity to break free from its acoustic prison.

Phillippe de Vitry is the man responsible. He was a 14^th century poet and musician, and evidently in his spare time the Bishop of Meaux. He could afford to spread himself thin because there just wasn't that much music to know in 1350. Syncopation and Baroque pop had yet to be invented. But Phillippe was also credited with the Ars Nova, or the “new technique” for writing music, although I suspect Phillippe was more of a Phil Spector than a Brian Wilson in this regard. Anyway, the primary new idea in “Ars” was to combine folk tunes with bible stories, a perfect fit considering how many whores with hearts of gold and cheating alcoholic husbands filled the sacred texts. And like The Beach Boys, the Ars advocated above all else, harmony. Western music begins with the Ars Nova, including our subject here, Christmas Carols, and one choral in particular.

The Motown of the early Christmas song was medieval France, and the 14^th century Chubby Checker was Chretien de Troyes, using the refrain and verse style as advocated by the Ars Nova. Chretien's hard driving lyrics for his “Legands of King Arthrur” made people want to get up on their feet and move, in a sort of communal “twist”, the circle dance or Bransles, called a carol. And just like disco, the name of the dance would label the entire genre of music. In the absence of recordings, Chretien's music was preformed by traveling minstrels, who would sing the verse, while the simple refrains (also called “the burden”), was usually something like “Fa la la, la la,”. This could even be sung by the village idiot, thus avoiding the Mick Jagger mumbled lyrics problem. Of course when the top 1% held a party, they were not required to sing along. That would have been undignified, particularly if they couldn't sing well. So, they hired somebody else to sing for them, thus inventing girl groups and boy bands – the choir.

We should still be singing the mega-hits written during this golden age of Christmas music, when songs like “That Was My Woo”, by the artist formally known as Robert Faiyrfax, ruled the top 40 charts, but we aren't, at least not in English. In fact we have little record (except Fairfax's two beat rhythms) of the exciting English plainsong tunes from the Golden Age of Christmas because at the beginning of the 17^th century came the biggest buzz-kill in Christmas history, an English religious fanatic named Oliver Cromwell and his band, the Puritans. They outlawed Christmas and dancing entirely, and burned every page of music they could lay their anti-aria hands on. It was as if Mr. Scrooge had turned pyromaniac after being left in charge of the office Christmas party. Not much was left.

After the Reformation stuffed the Puritans back into their music-less box, English Christmas started again, from scratch. The first reborn popular hit was “The Wassail Song”, which was not much of Christmas carol, since it starts, “Here we come a-wassailing, Among the leaves so green”. Leaves have not been green in England during December since the island was a lot closer to the equator, about 240 million years ago. So the Carol Kings and Paul McCartneys of the 18^th and 19^th centuries began looking for tunes and lyrics in those places the Puritans had not reached - France.

“Angels from the Realms of Glory” was translated from its original French in 1816, and sung to the tune which would later be used for “Angles We Have Heard on High”. And then there is the cheerful, “Un flambeau, Jeannette, Isabelle!”, or “Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella!” All these France to English carols were huge hits and even more profitable because there were no royalties to pay. In music circles this whole sale theft from dead writers is referred to as “adaptation”. And it took a politician, Davies Gilbert to recognize the legal advantages of that. In 1822 he published a collection of previously French carols, and the flood gates were opened. Over the next decade “The First Noel” and “Hark the Herald Angles Sing” were rescued from France to be published in English for free. And then in 1840 the young Queen Victoria married Prince Albert from Germany, revealing to English “adapters” a new source. In fact, German sources became so popular that the original Protestant Martin Luther was credited with writing “Away In A Manger”, but that was just a marketing gimmick. And by the end of the 19^th century, German “adaptations” had been sucked dry, and tune hungry carol composers were forced to look farther east.  And, it turned out, to the west, as well.

Katherine Kennicott Davis was born on the cusp of this shift in searching, in 1892 in St. Louis, Missouri. She was raised a Methodist, and composed her first piece of music at 15. She studied at Wesley College in Massachusetts, and in Paris with the extraordinary Nadia Boulanger. She then made Massachusetts her home, teaching music at the girl's Concord Academy. And in 1939 she “adapted” the traditional Welsh hymn called “Ash Grove”, originally written in 1802. She wrote new lyrics and relabeled it. “Let All Things Now Living”, AKA ” The Thanksgiving Song”. It proved to be a minor hit, encouraging her to continue looking. In a collection of traditional Czech carols, she found the rhythmic “Rocking Carol”. ( All Things Living), and her skills and talents discovered in this intricate melody the core of her next hit, a lead soprano with an alto harmony tenor and base - with keyboard for rehearsal only – which Katherine titled “The Carol of the Drum.”

I need to mention here, that Katherine appears to have been, as she was raised, a perfect Victorian lady. She humbly listed her name on the published sheet music as “C.R. W. Robinson”, since even in 1941 women were not expected to have public achievements. She had published “Let All Things” under the name “John Cowley”. In fact most of the 600 songs she wrote were originally published under various false names, to disguise her sex. I get the feeling Katherine was always more comfortable in hiding, and she would later claim the melody for “Carol of the Drum” came to her while she was trying to take a nap. Or, maybe it really did.

And it was now that the economics of the music industry took Katherine's song out of her hands. In 1955 “The Carol of the Drum” was recorded by the Von Trapp Family Singers, of “Sound of Music” fame. The Austrian immigrants retired shortly there after, and the song went no where until 20^th Century Fox Records contracted with Harry Simeone to record a Christmas album of choir music. Simeone liked Katherine's tune, but he felt he could improve it. And so he did. He did enough of a re-write that he felt the song should be renamed, and when the Harry Simeone Choral group released their album “Sing We Now of Christmas” just before Christmas 1958, the new title of Katherine's adapted carol was “The Little Drummer Boy”.

It literally rocketed to the top of the charts, the “single”, a sort of vinyl MP3 download (for those of you born after 1990)  went number one with a bullet (for those of you born before 1960). As Katherine herself put it, her little song was “done to death on radio and TV". In 1963 Fox re-released the album but re-titled it “The Little Drummer Boy; A Christmas Festival”. Again it went to number one. The song was covered by everybody from Bing Crosby and the Beverly Sisters to Marlene Dietrich and the Royal Scots Guards. By 1962 it was one of the top 40 Christmas songs, and it has remained there ever since. Quite an accomplishment for a shy lady like Katherine. (Little Drummer Boy)

Come they told me, pa rum pum pum pum

A new born King to see, pa rum pum pum pum
Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum
To lay before the King, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

So to honor Him, pa rum pum pum pum,

When we come.

Little Baby, pa rum pum pum pum

I am a poor boy too, pa rum pum pum pum
I have no gift to bring, pa rum pum pum pum
That's fit to give the King, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

Shall I play for you, pa rum pum pum pum,

On my drum?

Mary nodded, pa rum pum pum pum

The ox and lamb kept time, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my drum for Him, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my best for Him, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

Then He smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum

Me and my drum.

- 30 - 

THE LIGHT FANTASTIC

I wish I had been in the Alexandrian suburb of Eleusis, in July of 169 B.C. when for a few brief moments the past and future were divided by a line in the sand. On one side stood the royal egomaniac Antiochus IV, whose army was just four miles from capturing the Pharaoh of Egypt. Standing in his way was one old man, the Roman ambassador, Gaius Popillius, carrying a decree from “the Senate and the People of Rome”. It ordered the upstart Syrian Greek to turn his Slecuid army around, and go home. Antiochus IV was infuriated, and pleaded he had to consult his advisers.  But Gaius would have none of that. Grabbing a stick the old man drew a circle around the King and insisted, if Antiochus stepped over the line without agreeing to turn back, it would mean war with Rome. It was the original line drawn in the sand, and for one of the few times in history, it actually worked. Antiochus IV went home. It came to be called the “Day of Eleusis”, and because of that day, we celebrate a holiday – just not the one you're thinking about, probably.

Antiochus IV was King of the Slecuid Empire, centered in Syria and stretching from India on the east and now the border with Egypt on the west. He was called Epiphanes, “God Manifest” on his monuments, and Epimanes behind his back - “The Mad One”. And as he sullenly retreated eastward across the Sinai, he got madder and madder. You see, some jackass in Judea had spread a rumor that Antiochus IV had been  killed in battle. Maybe the Romans had spread the story to weaken Antiochus in his rear, and maybe Antiochus had spread it himself, to flush out any trouble makers among his conquered peoples.  But whoever spread it, the hottest hot head in Judea, a Jewish religious fanatic named Mattathias ben Johanan, was eager to believe the rumor. With about a thousand of his followers, Matthathias came charging out of the hills to capture the temple in Jerusalem and drive the high priest Menelaus into the wilderness

Now, few people in Jerusalem would miss Menelaus. He had become high priest because his brother Onias had been high priest before him. But when Onias had sent Menelaus to deliver the yearly taxes to Antiochus IV,  Menelaus had included a little extra from himself, a bribe, and suddenly Onias was no longer high priest, Menelaus was. So you can see why Antiochus IV tended not to think very highly of the high priests of Judisiam, and neither did the people of Jerusalem.  Menelaus slipped a little more in public opinion when his brother Onias died while cleaning his sword and it went off - bad luck. So the Jews of Jerusalem were not really sorry to see Menelaus gone.

But Antiochus IV(above) was sorry. Menelaus might have been a sniveling bottom feeder, but he was the King's sniveling bottom feeder. And then there was that whole “got to show them whose the boss” dynamic going on. And Antiochus IV had an army which  had been expecting a rich sacking of Alexandria, which the Romans had put the kibosh to. So in the dog days of August 169 B.C., everything was pointing toward a very bad day for Jerusalem. And it came.

It seems – oops - somebody had left the city gates open. So the Slecuid army marched right in, as Mattathias slipped out the back door. First the Slecuid  soldiers stripped the Jewish temple of everything of value -  everything not already sold to pay tribute to Antiochus IV, or stolen earlier by the Babylonians or the Egyptians when they sacked Jerusalem.  Really there couldn't have been that much left to steal. But whatever it was, Antiochus IV took it. And then, according to the holy text, Second Macabbees, “And he commanded his soldiers to cut down relentlessly every one they met and to slay those who went into the houses.”.

The primary non-religious source for what happened was the Jewish radical turned Roman informer, Josephus. He says that over three days Antiochus IV murdered 44,000 people in Jerusalem, which would have been about 10% of the population, and another 44,000 women and children were sold into slavery. Antiochus IV then built a citadel right next to the Jewish temple, which he stocked with a permanent garrison. Then he had the Jewish temple re-dedicated. On the altar where Menelaus had sacrificed goats to honor Yahweh, the Greek priests now sacrificed pigs to honor Zeus. Antiochus IV also issued a decree forbidding circumcision - (who was the lucky guy who got to check on that? ). It seemed the Jews had finally ticked off one King too many.

But, a year later human nature, or maybe it was Yahweh, intervened. In 168 BC, the rising empire of Parthia captured the Afghanistan city of Heart (Hair-it). This was an important because  the region around Herat was the bread basket of central Asia, and sat astride the trade route with India. We're talking a major loss of taxes, here. So Antiochus IV had to turn eastward to deal with the upstart Parthians. But he did not forget the troublesome Jews.  He ordered his governor of Syria, a nobleman named Lysias  “to conquer Judea, enslave its inhabitants, utterly destroy Jerusalem and abolish the whole nation."

In 167 B.C. Lysias dispatched four divisions to accomplish this task. As they marched on Jerusalem, Mattathias, who had reappeared, now  organized the faithful.  However, because he was a religious fanatic, Mattathias insisted that all his soldiers strictly adhere to Jewish law - that's what they were fighting for, wasn't it?  Unfortunately the Slecuid army did not recognize the Jewish Sabbath, and on a Saturday they attacked the first Jewish village in their way. Following the law, the villagers refused to do any work on the sabbath, even refusing to lift a weapon to defend themselves. All 1,000 were slaughtered. After this Mattathias was replaced as leader of the revolt by his son, Judah. And under him, the Jews decided to fight, twenty-four, seven.

It turns out the new Jewish leader, Judah ben Mattathias was pretty good at it. In 166 B.C. Judah fell on the Slecuid supply base at Emmaus, killing its 3,000 man garrison, capturing a huge cache of weapons and food, and forcing half the Seleucid army to retreat. A year later he beat the other half of the Slecuid army at Beth-zur, forcing them, again, to retreat. It was battles like this that earned him the nickname of Judah the Hammer, or in Hebrew, Judah Maccabees. Shortly after this victory, word again arrived that Antioschus IV was dead. Except this time he really was. He'd been in Babylon, struggling to prepare a counter attack against the Parthians, when he suddenly dropped dead. He might have been sick, but I think it more likely, he'd been poisoned. In any case, his young son, Antiochus V, now inherited the empire.

Lysias immediately had himself declared Antioschus V's guardian, which put the Governor in charge of the entire empire. Lysias ordered an end to efforts to retake Heart, and in 165 B.C. he marched for a third time on Jerusalem. Third times the charm, right? This time Lysias came by the southern road, catching the Hammer off guard. This time Lysias actually laid siege to Jerusalem. This time it looked as if the clock had run out for the Jews. This time there was nobody to save them. And then out of nowhere appeared a guy named Phillip, (the royal governor of Babylon, actually), who had been with Antioschus IV when he died. Phillip claimed that on his death bed Antioschus IV had asked him, Phillip, to raise the king's son, now known as Antioschus V.  That would make Phillip the regent, not Lysias.  Lysias did not believe a word of it. Would you? But Lysias still had to deal with Philip’s army. And one morning Judah looked out from walls of Jerusalem, and saw...nobody. The entire Slecuid army had mysteriously disappeared. It was a miracle. As long as you did not notice the whole Slecuid civil war going on.

Judah Maccabees ordered a a new altar built for the temple, and declared 8 days of “sacrifice and songs” for its re-dedication. The pigs were out, Yahweh was back in. There was only one problem. Tradition said in re-dedicating the Temple required the temple's  menorah lamps to burn every night, all night, during the celebration. But there was only enough oil for one night. What to do?

Now if it was me, I would have ordered the nine lamps on the menorah to be publicly lit at sundown each night, as usual. And then a half hour after sundown,  after the faithful had gone home to bed, the priests would quietly extinguish the lamps. This way, instead of burning through all the oil in one eight hour winter's night, the lamps would burn for a about an hour each night, for eight nights. And I think that maybe that was what the Hammer did. But then, I am a non-believer. And priest are in the business of believing, even in miracles. And the truth is, miracles don't happen without a little help from somebody. Who that help comes from depends on who and what you believe in. Anyway....

It was the first Hanukkah, the first festival of the lights. Two thousand years later it is not a very important Jewish holiday, and about the only one in which women play a leading role. Each of the eight nights a woman first lights the “shamash”, the central candle or lamp, used to illuminate the entire ritual. On each successive night , the shamash is then used to light one candle more each nigh until all are burning. In each Jewish home they are displayed in a window or an exterior door, “to illuminate the house outside” the home. And as they do so, the women recite the Hanukkah prayer.

“We light these lights for the miracles and the wonders, for the redemption and the battles that you made for our forefathers, in those days at this season, through your holy priests. During all eight days of Hanukkah these lights are sacred, and we are not permitted to make ordinary use of them except for to look at them in order to express thanks and praise to Your great Name for Your miracles, Your wonders and Your salivations.”

Lysias defeated and killed Philip in 163 B.C.. But in 162 B.C. Lysias was defeated by Demetrius I, who had been Antiochus IV's older brother and Antiochus V's uncle. Being the older brother, Demetrius was supposed to have been made King first. But when their father died, Demetrius was being held as the official hostage in Rome. So it turned out Antiochus IV had been a usurper, which made his defeat in 162 B.C.,  payback. Demetrius executed both Lysias, and the boy king Antiochus V. Demetrius then tried to reconquer the Jews, but the Fighting Maccabees  held him off for ten years, until Demetrius was killed by a new usurper in 150 B.C. It was the end of Slecuid empire.

The next empire to come marching down the coast road of Judea would be the Romans. And they and the Jews would have their own problems, strongly reminiscent of the ones the Jews and Slecuid's had shared. They say some people never learn. But I think, most people never learn, certainly not in the middle east.

- 30 -

HERE WE COME A WASSAILING

I don't know if you know this, but the Christmas carol started out as a dance, and then became a song. Whereas wassailing started out as a libation and then became a song and then darn near disappeared. Both traditions suffered their original metamorphoses for the same reason – Puritan kill-joys. The carol was revived and survives as a gentle Victorian anachronism. Still, most of the music and some of the words remain recognizable. But if somehow you could transport a 12^th century English Celtic villain into a modern wassailing, the first words out of their mouth would be the medieval equivalent of “where is the booze and the broads?” Call it the cost of Christianity, or progress, or even just the march of time, but clearly we've lost some things in reaching the 21^st century. And one of those some things was wassailing. Song

“Here we come a-wassailing

Among the leaves so green,
Here we come a-wand'ring
So fair to be seen.”

During the 2^nd century C. E. when you the walked into any Inn or Public House in that far flung corner of the Roman Empire called England, you were greeted by your fellow vandals with the phrase, “Waes hael”, or “good health”. And your proper response would be “Drinc hael”, or “A drink to your health”. And what the Celtic holi-poloi would be drinking might be Mead, made from fermented honey, or a fermented version of whatever else grew locally – beer in rye growing areas, or in the hilly west counties, where the Celts grew apples, hard cider. Everybody drank these concoctions because the alcohol killed most the pathogens in the local water supply. That's why we still call consuming alcohol, drinking. Getting bombed was just a happy side effect.

“We are not daily beggars

That beg from door to door,
But we are neighbors' children
Whom you have seen before.”

The Inn keepers kept their mixture in a large “wassail bowl” or "good health bowl" as a centerpiece on the common table, so after dinner the paying guests could use their now empty food bowls to dip themselves an after-dinner drink. It is an oddity of these original pubs that the food cost money but the drinks were free. As the food supply increased, this pricing scheme would be reversed. On special occasions, the Mead would be added to the beer or cider, which improved the flavor and the alcohol content. And so taking a holiday drink from the wassail bowl became “wassailing”.

“Good master and good mistress,

As you sit beside the fire,
Pray think of us poor children
Who wander in the mire.”

All of this was ancient enough to be a Celtic tradition long before Rome was Christian. And about a month after the winter solstice the pagan Celts were even wassailing in their fields and apple orchards. They called it in Old English La Mas Ubhal (mangled into modern English as, “lambs wool”), or the celebration of the apple. On the Twelfth Night of Christmas (see these pages for Twelve Days of Christmas) apple farmers would lug a large milk container filled with cider and cider soaked cakes into their fields. In the dark and cold they would build a fire, drink and eat and dance. In song the men would threaten the trees and the women would plead the tree's defense, all to encourage them to produce apples in the coming year.

“We have a little purse

Made of ratching leather skin;
We want some of your small change
To line it well within.”

It was called “An Apple Howling” or a “Luck Visit”. In Devonshire, standing under each tree, the farmers would sing “Stand fast, root! Bear well, top! Pray God send us a good howling crop: Every twig, apples big; Every bough, apples now! Hats full! caps full! Bushel-bushel-sacks full, And my pockets full, too, huzzah!” The cakes were placed in the forks of the trunk, baked apple splices were tossed into the crown, and cider splashed on the bark. It seems as if the farmers were trying to give the trees the idea of what they were supposed to produce come spring.

“Bring us out a table

And spread it with a cloth;
Bring us out a cheese,
And of your Christmas loaf.”

And then midway through the 5^th century the Anglo-Saxons defeated the native Celts at the battle of Crayford, and over the next 600 years these invaders squeezed the Celts back into the Welsh highlands and the far west counties, which, by chance, included the apple growing regions. So, wassailing in Wales and Devon became associated more with cider, while in Anglo-Saxon England, beer and ale were what filled the wassail bowls, and the post- solstice celebration morphed into a fund raising venue. Originally, the English village leaders went house to house, singing a Wassail song at each door and offering the residents a drink from their Wassail bowl. In response, the residents were expected to make a donation to the poor. Eventually, the leadership lost control of the process and the poor themselves stepped in to fill the vacuum. You can imagine how happy the wealthy were to share their money with a bunch of dirty, young “urban types”, who came begging at their front door, something forbidden the rest of the year. Wassailing door-to-door became frowned upon, mostly by those best able to donate.

“God bless the master of this house,

Likewise the mistress too;
And all the little children
That round the table go.”

In 1066, King Henry and his Normans conquered Anglo-Saxon England. The Normans not only brought French to the island, but they also brought a militant brand of Christianity. And that religion would prove to be wassailing's most determined foe. We know wassailing was still popular in 17^th Century London, because just after New Years in 1625 the anal retentive Sir John Francklyn made a notation in his account book of the one pound 6 pence he paid for “the cup”, meaning the Wassail cup.

“Love and joy come to you,

And to you your wassail, too,
And God bless you, and send you
A Happy New Year,
And God send you a Happy New Year.”

But after the Puritans chopped off the head of Charles I in 1649, they began to remake Britain in the their image of God. And it was a dull, dull God they envisioned. The Puritans were suspicious of wassailing, of all that drinking and dancing in the dark, and they disapproved of peasants directly asking their “betters” for money. So laws were passed, and punishments metered out. Some who celebrated the pagan days were even burned at the stake. The impact of their moral divide survived even until the end of the 20^th century, as evidenced by the laws allowing advertising of wine and beer on television, but restricting the same for the sacrilegious “hard” liquors.  So if, at your next Christmas party you should find a wassail bowl bubbling away on the stove, dip a cup, and enjoy. It is a tiny taste of our shared pagan past, a harmless reminder that before Christianity, there was a more generous god in every tree and stone, as well as every soul.

"Wassail, wassail, out of the milk pail

Wassail, wassail as white as my finger nail
Wassail, wassail in snow, frost, and hail,
Wassail, wassail that never will fail.”

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