Wassail

Wassail! wassail! all over the town,
Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown;
Our bowl it is made of the white maple tree;
With the wassailing bowl, we'll drink to thee.

The Christmas season in New Braunfels begins with the Wassailfest, and since our realtor gave us little wassail mugs as a housewarming present, we figured we had better attend. And were we ever glad that we did! New Braunfels is laid out much like a New England town with a green space in the center of town encircled by what would be called in the east a “rotary.” Or maybe it is laid out like a German village. At any rate, for the Wassailfest the town takes the song quite literally: there is wassail all over the town. All the shops are open, people are in a festive mood, and everywhere there is free wassail to drink in our little mugs. The wassail “all over town” is really a competition; festgoers vote at the end of the evening for the best wassail of the night.

And what is wassail, anyway? Judging by what we tasted, it can be just about anything. The term comes from Anglo Saxon wæs hæil, which meant “be healthy!” and does not give any clue as to what should be the ingredients for this mulled wine or cider or flavored beer concoction. The strange word “wassail” lives on in Britain in another iteration today. There are pubs all over the UK called “The Pig and Whistle.” Did you ever wonder why? Well the Old Norse word for barley was bygg. At the end of the barley harvest in earlier days, people celebrated with a feast known as a bygg wassail. And from that old early medieval celebration we get the modern-day “Pig and Whistle” pubs.

I don’t know if the locals know the story of wassail, but they sure know how to start off the time of preparation for Christmas with a bang.