wassail

In apple-growing regions like Kent and Devonshire, farmers would additionally toast or salute the apple tree and pour wassail over its roots in preparation for a good harvest year.

From Salon ● Dec. 18, 2021

I never had a clear idea of what a wassail was.

From The New Yorker ● Dec. 18, 2018

The scent of cinnamon and clove permeated the building, as members brewed traditional wassail for the occasion.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 11, 2017

You spoiled them, and they came to expect your Christmas exertions as a tradition that spared them the effort of providing their own ham and wassail bowl.

From Slate ● Dec. 31, 2014

The meats were followed by flaming puddings and bowls of wassail, chestnuts, and apples.

From "The Door in the Wall" by Marguerite de Angeli

In January I attend one of Kent’s growing number of wassails, a half-pagan, half-Christian ceremony in which an apple tree is fed a tribute of cider to encourage a good harvest later in the year.

From The Guardian ● Feb. 9, 2020

The fight against evil spirits continues the following month in the orchards of southern England, where Apple wassails, or Apple Howling ceremonies, are common.

From BBC ● Oct. 29, 2014

She showed him the chapel, impressive in its ancient Norman simplicity and in its ruin, and the great smoke-begrimed banqueting-hall, where wassails had been held, and beauty had thought her lord a beast.

From What Dreams May Come by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

Thou shalt have possets, wassails fine, Not made of ale, but spicèd wine; To make thy maids and self free mirth, All sitting near the glitt'ring hearth.

From Six Centuries of English Poetry Tennyson to Chaucer by James Baldwin

Whilst youthful sports are lasting, To feasting turn our fasting; With revels and with wassails Make grief and care our vassals.

From In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 Christmas Poems from 'round the World by Harrison S. (Harrison Smith) Morris

I wassailed the thing down to its yeasty dregs.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 26, 2016

In this very place, perhaps upon this very spot, he feasted and wassailed with his warriors, and drained his horn to the future glories of his name.

From Greifenstein by F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford

We wassailed deep into that night and out the other side, and we liked our Otto more than ever.

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 152, May 9, 1917 by Various

Class A, 1st, A formal affair … with tennis; A wassailing we will go; Best of the Wurst, New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung. ; 3rd, The Rescuers, Seguin Gazette-Enterprise.

From Washington Times ● Mar. 3, 2019

Peter McKintosh’s set has a sort of Vorticist pizazz, and I liked the sweet assemblage of wassailing mice that suggest the passage of the seasons.

From New York Times ● Jul. 28, 2017

The British tradition of wassailing in exchange for a bowl of hot mulled cider goes back centuries, as does eggnog.

From New York Times ● Dec. 19, 2016

This is orchard wassailing, the far older custom of serenading apple trees in winter to wake the sleepy, scrumpy-producing spirits within.

From The Guardian ● Jan. 5, 2013

Before the wassailing begins, the various fathers perform a curious operation on the arms of their sons, who are seated beside them.

From Balder the Beautiful, Volume I. A Study in Magic and Religion: the Golden Bough, Part VII., The Fire-Festivals of Europe and the Doctrine of the External Soul by Sir James George Frazer