In the first week of January, Twelfth Night marks the end of the Christmas season and historically culminated in a final party of Christmastide.
There is some ongoing debate as to which day Twelfth Night actually falls on, and this depends whether Christmas Day or Boxing Day is counted as the first night. It’s further complicated by the existence of Old Twelfth Night (see below) but in the Christian calendar it’s celebrated on the fifth and marks the eve of Epiphany, when the wise men were said to have visited the baby Jesus. It was (and still is) a significant date in the Church year.
As any GCSE English student will tell you, Twelfth Night is immortalized in the famous Shakespeare play, which would have been performed on or around the night itself, and its plot line reflects some of the chaos and calamity that typically surrounded the celebrations. One Twelfth Night custom was to bake a cake that contained a bean or dried pea. The person finding the bean in their slice would be crowned Lord of Misrule for the day. Masters would become servants and vice versa, and the Lord’s word was law. Midnight was the end of his rule when the world would return to normal.
Other traditions included creating surprise pies with live fillings to amuse Twelfth Night diners (the origin of the ‘four and twenty blackbirds’ in the nursery rhyme) and wassailing, a ceremonial blessing of the apple orchards.
Wassailing remains surprisingly common in the cider-producing counties even today. Although usually celebrated on Twelfth Night, some maintain it is most properly observed on ‘Old Twelfth (or Twelvey) Night’ – 17 January (which would have been the right date before the modern Gregorian calendar was adopted). The word itself is a toast derived from the Middle English greeting ‘waes hael’, meaning ‘may you be healthy’.
The form of the ceremony differs greatly from county to county, but all involve singing, dancing and drinking (lots of drinking) to the health of the apple trees in the hope of a good harvest next year. The largest or oldest tree in the orchard is selected and the cider is liberally sprinkled at its base. Crowds then sing, shout and bang pots and pans to ward off evil spirits and awaken the trees as they come towards the end of their winter slumber.
It has long been thought unlucky to keep Christmas decorations up beyond Twelfth Night, and this probably originated from the belief that spirits inhabited the greenery brought into houses at the beginning of the Christmas period. After twelve nights, the spirits would grow restless and want to be returned to nature.
Try: Mulled cider with spiced apple jelly (p. 33)