The Dead of Winter: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures

by Sarah Clegg

The word ‘wassail’ first appeared in the eighth century in the poem Beowulf, and seems to have been a toast (at the very least, it was a shout that should echo through courts and begin the revels of warriors). By the fourteenth century, we have mentions of communal drinking bowls that could be passed person to person with cries of ‘wassail’ and ‘drinkhail’ and an exchange of kisses. And while cheery toasting at mass get-togethers sounds very Christmassy, it was only in the sixteenth century that wassail bowls are firmly placed in the Christmas season, appearing at a Twelfth Night party in Henley in England. Their Christmas popularity grew, though, so that eventually even Henry VIII had his own wassail bowl. By the seventeenth century, groups of women were taking the bowl door to door and offering a drink in exchange for food or money. Soon, monsters were tagging along on the visits, as the wassailing tradition melded with Christmas door-to-door guising, and the bowl, more often than not, was left at home. By the nineteenth century wassailing could be just another word for Christmas guising – no apples or bowls necessary. This was the wassailing to which the Mari Lwyd was originally attached. But from the late sixteenth century on in Southern England, wassailing had moved in another direction. Instead of taking the bowl house to house, wassailing groups would take it into the orchards or fields over Christmas and the New Year to bid good health to trees and crops. Other bit...