Steyning Community Orchard: It’s Wassail time again!
Saturday 18th January, 2025. 17:30. Starting at the Steyning Cricket Club.
It is that time again. A new year has just slipped in. January is unfolding, cold, grey and wet but Steyning Community Orchard has something rather special lined up for everyone; young, old and somewhere in between, to brighten up the short days and long dark nights.
It is time for our annual Wassail. This ancient tradition has roots that go down a long way into our past. The word ‘Wassail’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon greeting ‘Waes hael’ and means ‘be hale’, be in ‘good health’.
Our ancestors gathered together on the eve of Twelfth Night, the 5th January (or in the old Julien calendar, the 17th January) in the depth of winter, to wassail the fruit trees in their orchards. To rouse them into life; chanting and singing, beating the trees with sticks to wake them from their winter slumber, praising them for past harvests and exhorting them to ‘be hale’ for the coming season and harvest. Here in Sussex, it is known as Apple Howling. And here in Steyning, we follow the old Julien calendar.
So, imagine. On the evening of the 18th January, 2025, as the last light fades from the sky in the west and darkness creeps out from the hedgerows around the Memorial orchard, a little bit of magic stirs as candles are lit around the fruit trees.
In the distance, in the pool of light spilling from the windows of the cricket club across the field, a crowd is collecting. In a darkened corner, hidden in the shadows, the Mythago Morris dancers, their faces blackened and their tatter jackets ruffling faintly in the breeze, are ready to begin the evening of dancing and song. They draw the crowd together, explain the wassail, dance and lead the young, the old and the somewhere in-betweens to the orchard.
In the middle of the orchard stands an old, gnarled tree which glows softly in the light cast from the candles laid around it. The wind rustles the decorations woven through it. It is time it awoke from its winter sleep and any evil spirits within it are chased away. This is the fun part as everyone begins to dance around the tree, chanting, stamping feet, banging pans and blowing whistles as the cry of ‘Wassail’ goes up into the winter sky.
The Wassail bowl sitting at the bottom of the tree is filled with mead, apples, sugar, spices and egg and everyone is invited to dip a slice of toast into it and hang it on a branch of the tree; a token of thanks for the fruit it bore the previous year and a gift to the tree spirit living within it.
More singing, more noise, more dancing until a final howl rises to the sky and hovers in the darkness as the wassail draws to an end and people drift back to the Cricket Club, leaving the candles glowing in the peace of the orchard, and the night.
If this sounds good to you, come along and enjoy it. Saturday, 18th January, 2025. It starts at 17:30 outside the Cricket Club. Don’t be late.
Donations towards this evening’s Wassail and the upkeep of our orchards would be VERY welcome so please bring some CASH with you.
