For the health and safety of our members and all who may have planned to attend, this event has been cancelled.  There is a gradual increase in the number of flu and Covid cases in the county creating a risk for attending an indoor activity without masks.   

Cheverly Village welcomes the new year with songs of the holidays while enjoying light refreshments and hot spiced cider, hot cocoa, or hot tea. 

We welcome Cheverly Village members,volunteers, and friends!

Wassail General Information
In the seventeenth century the wassail was a definite institution — the carrying about of a bowl of spiced ale
from house to house to drink healths in expectation of a contribution. Nowadays the utterance of a "Merry
Christmas" is often judged sufficient for the tip.  The word "wassail" comes from the Old English "Waes hael" — that is, "Good Health!"  The correct response was "Drinc hael." In Best-Loved Christmas Carols, Clancy and Studwell notes that the custom of wassailing may go back to the fifth century, although the first mention in print was in 1140.  Some believe that the custom could date to the third century. Wassailing is one of those wonderful British traditions that has just about managed to hang on into the 21st century.

Still critical to the cider-making calendar of the UK, wassail is celebrated on Twelfth Night, the pagan New Year’s Eve, commonly held to be 6 January.

The idea of wassailing—blessing, toasting, sharing and giving thanks during the Yuletide period—has continued through the centuries. The Victorians seized on its spirit of generosity by endorsing the concept of wassailing from door to door—poorer folk singing songs in return for charitable gifts, rather than begging. This soon morphed into the ever-popular Christmas carolling. And, of course, the much enjoyed winter warmer,
mulled cider is a direct descendent of the original spiced cider punch drunk all those centuries back. But it’s in the orchard that the wassail has really retained its significance and mythical status. The earliest accounts of wassailing fruit trees come from the East of England—in St Albans in 1486 and Kent in 1585.