For The Christmas Goose

      "If you're looking for a stunning Christmas centrepiece, this roast goose recipe is it! The wild rice stuffing is deliciously different, studded with apples and nuts and flavoured with aromatic herbs. You could try using walnuts or pecans instead of hazelnuts, and in addition to apples you could add some dried currants. If there's any extra stuffing that doesn't fit in the goose cavity, simply place it in a buttered baking dish and bake covered for the last hour of cooking. "

 

Watch this video from AllrecipesUK to see how to roast a Christmas goose to perfection, complete with a delicious hazelnut, apple and wild rice stuffing. 

      Two excellent stuffings for the Christmas goose are made as follows: Mix two cupfuls of warm mashed potatoes with half a cupful of onion juice, half a cupful of walnut kernels rolled fine, a few spoonfuls of cream, a tablespoonful of butter, the yolk of two eggs and seasoning to taste. Mix well. Another is made with two cupfuls of bread crumbs, one large sour apple, a cupful each of raisins and boiled chestnuts, a stalk of celery and a small onion chopped fine, a large lump of butter, some pepper and salt and enough cream to give it the proper consistency. If more stuffing is made than needed, make the surplus into small balls and bake until golden brown, and use to garnish the platter. Apple sauce, or currant jelly is the proper accompaniment for goose. Try either of these stuffings and enjoy! (These two recipes date from 1911)

The Wassail Carols

"Here we come a-wassailing"

      Here We Come A-wassailing (or Here We Come A-caroling) is an English traditional Christmas carol and New Years song, apparently composed c. 1850. The old English wassail song refers to 'wassailing', or singing carols door to door wishing good health, while the a- is an archaic intensifying prefix; compare A-Hunting We Will Go and lyrics to The Twelve Days of Christmas (e.g., "Six geese a-laying").

      According to Readers Digest; "the Christmas spirit often made the rich a little more generous than usual, and bands of beggars and orphans used to dance their way through the snowy streets of England, offering to sing good cheer and to tell good fortune if the householder would give them a drink from his wassail bowl or a penny or a pork pie or, let them stand for a few minutes beside the warmth of his hearth. The wassail bowl itself was a hearty combination of hot ale or beer, apples, spices and mead, just alcoholic enough to warm tingling toes and fingers of the singers".

More Related Content:

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• Traditional cider: Here we come a-wassailing!
• Old Virginia Wassail Cider
• Traditional Wassailing (and, incidentally, Toasting)

"Wishing You and Yours a Very Happy New Years!
 I recorded all 4 parts using Garageband Application
 on my Macbook! Scenes are from around my backyard,
along the Oswego River,here in Upstate NY!"

"Oh, Here We Come a Wassailing"

      The tradition of wassailing (alt sp wasselling) falls into two distinct categories: The House-Visiting wassail and the Orchard-Visiting wassail. House-Visiting wassail, caroling by any other name, is the practice of people going door-to-door singing Christmas carols. The Orchard-Visiting wassail refers to the ancient custom of visiting orchards, reciting incantations and singing to the trees in apple orchards in cider-producing regions of England to promote a good harvest for the coming year.

      Some scholars prefer a pre-Christian explanation of the old traditional ceremony of wassailing. How far the tradition dates back is unknown but it has undeniable connections with Anglo-Saxon pagan ritual. Of recent times the word Wassail (from the Anglo-Saxon toast Wæs þu hæl, "be thou hale" — i.e., "be in good health") has come to be synonymous with Christmas. The word wassail is old English (OE) and so may predate the Norman conquest in 1066. According to the Oxford English Dictionary "waes hael" is the Middle English spelling parallel to OE "wes hal". The American Heritage Dictionary, fourth edition, gives Old Norse "ves heill" as the source of Middle English "waeshaeil". The correct response to the toast is Drinc hæl.

      Christmas was not celebrated anywhere before the third century, and only gradually moved northwards through Europe. It was probably the Normans who brought the celebration to England. Traditionally, the wassail is celebrated on Twelfth Night (mostly regarded as January 6, but more properly the evening of January 5). However most people insist on wassailing on 'Old Twelvey Night' (January 17) as that would have been the correct date before the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar in 1752.

      The practice has its roots in the middle ages as a reciprocal exchange between the feudal lords and their peasants as a form of recipient-initiated charitable giving, to be distinguished from begging. This point is made in the song "Here We Come A-Wassailing", when the wassailers inform the lord of the house that

"we are not daily beggars that beg from door to door but we are friendly neighbours whom you have seen before."

The lord of the manor would give food and drink to the peasants in exchange for their blessing and goodwill, i.e...

"Love and joy come to you,

And to you your wassail too;

And God bless you and send you

a Happy New Year"

... which would be given in the form of the song being sung. Wassailing is the background practice against which an English carol such as "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" dating back to sixteenth century England, can be made sense of. The carol lies in the English tradition where wealthy people of the community gave Christmas treats to the carolers on Christmas Eve such as 'figgy puddings'.

      Although wassailing is often described in innocuous and sometimes nostalgic terms, the practice in England has not always been considered so innocent. Wassailing was associated with rowdy bands of young men who would enter the homes of wealthy neighbors and demand free food and drink in a trick-or-treat fashion. If the householder refused, he was usually cursed, and occasionally his house was vandalized. The example of the exchange is seen in their demand for "figgy pudding" and "good cheer", i.e., the wassail beverage, without which the wassailers in the song will not leave; "We won't go until we get some, so bring some out here."

Above is a recipe for Wassail cooking over the stove, 7 pints of brown ale,
 1 bottle of dry sherry, cinnamon stick, ground ginger,
ground nutmeg, lemon slices.

      In the cider-producing West of England (primarily the counties of Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire) wassailing also refers to drinking (and singing) the health of trees in the hopes that they might better thrive.

      An old rhyme goes: “Wassaile the trees, that they may beare / You many a Plum and many a Peare: / For more or lesse fruits they will bring, / As you do give them Wassailing.”

      The purpose of wassailing is to awake the cider apple trees and to scare away evil spirits to ensure a good harvest of fruit in the Autumn.{"England In Particular", Common Ground 2007} The ceremonies of each wassail vary from village to village but they generally all have the same core elements. A wassail King and Queen lead the song and/or a processional tune to be played/sung from one orchard to the next, the wassail Queen will then be lifted up into the boughs of the tree where she will place toast soaked in Wassail from the Clayen Cup as a gift to the tree spirits (and to show the fruits created the previous year). Then an incantation is usually recited such as

      “Here's to thee, old apple tree, That blooms well, bears well. Hats full, caps full, Three bushel bags full, An' all under one tree. Hurrah! Hurrah!”

      Then the assembled crowd will sing and shout and bang drums and pots & pans and generally make a terrible racket until the gunsmen give a great final volley through the branches to make sure the work is done and then off to the next orchard. Perhaps unbeknown to the general public, this ancient English tradition is still very much thriving today. The West Country is the most famous and largest cider producing region of the country and some of the most important wassails are held annually in Carhampton (Somerset) and Whimple (Devon), both on 17 January (old Twelfth Night).

Clevedon (North Somerset) holds an annual Wassailing event in the popularly attended Clevedon Community Orchard, combining the traditional elements of the festival with the entertainment and music of the Bristol Morris Men and their cantankerous Horse.

      Private readings about people in Somerset in the 1800s revealed that inhabitants of Somerset practiced the old Wassailing Ceremony, singing the following lyrics after drinking the cider until they were "merry and gay:"

      "Apple tree, apple tree, we all come to wassail thee, Bear this year and next year to bloom and to blow, Hat fulls, cap fulls, three cornered sack fills, Hip, Hip, Hip, hurrah, Holler biys, holler hurrah."

A folktale from Somerset reflecting this custom tells of the "Apple Tree Man", the spirit of the oldest apple tree in an orchard, and in whom the fertility of the orchard is said to reside. In the tale a man offers his last mug of mulled cider to the trees in his orchard and is rewarded by the Apple Tree Man who reveals to him the location of buried treasure.

 

"Print this recipe for Fireside Wassail. A wonderful holiday spiced drink brought to you by BoydTV and FireplaceVideosHD.com. This is a non-alcoholic variation of a traditional yule time classic. A perfect hot juice drink for those cold winter nights or family gatherings. Sometimes spelled Wassel."

FIRESIDE WASSAIL (a.k.a. Hot Weasel)

2 Quarts Apple Cider

2 Cups Pineapple Juice

2 Cups Orange Juice

¾ Cup Lemon Juice

½ Cup Sugar

2 Cinnamon Sticks

12 Whole Cloves

Cheesecloth

Optional Garnishes:
- Cinnamon sticks
- Lemon slices
- Whole cloves

      "Tie 12 cloves and 2 cinnamon sticks in a cheesecloth bag. Combine spice bag, apple cider, juices, and sugar in a Dutch oven, stirring well; cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Discard the spice bag. Pour wassail into serving mugs and serve hot. If desired, garnish each serving with a cinnamon stick and a lemon slice studded with whole cloves. YIELD: About 3 Quarts"

Christmas Stationary Perfect for A Letter to Santa

      Need to print stationary for that special letter either to or from Santa? Below I've included some lovely printables for this very purpose: in black, red or green. Don't forget to keep your child's letter to Santa in a scrapbook. If she or he expects to send one, just print another as a copy to send.

Include Cotton Batting and Powdered Mica in Your Christmas Decor!

Novel Ways of Trimming Interiors For The Holiday, 1899 American Press Association

      A Christmas without snow is not always a pleasant season. With our variable climate and the passing away of the good old fashioned winter of our grandfathers the "beautiful" can no longer be relied upon as an accessory to Christmastide celebrations.

      A New York artist who has the happy faculty of thinking out such things for himself has adopted a plan in his own house which has always a congenial Christmas within doors, no matter what the weather may be without.

      This plan for converting a home into a grotto of boreal attractiveness is as follows: When it is decided in which room the Christmas tree is to be erected, a white sheet should be spread over the carpet, covering the entire floor of the room. The picture molding should then be draped with bunches of cotton batting and sprinkled with powdered mica to represent snow. About the sashee of the windows also should be bunched masses of this glistening cotton wool.

      The Christmas tree itself should stand in a snow bank, and its boughs should be laden with flecks of the "beautiful" spread about as generously as though it were standing in a Maine forest in midwinter.

      The effect of such unique and at the same time inexpensive decoration is marvelous. It brightens and lights and cheers a room in a most wonderful manner. If there are a number of pictures in the room, the frames of these can also be done in white cotton wool and touches added wherever such would in crease the wintery illusion.

      This sort of decoration should be most acceptable in the south, where Christmas often comes without snow. It must be remembered, however, that this sort of decoration should not be left up after Christmas day. The white cotton very soon becomes dusty and draggled, and when once in this condition the charm is lost. The accompanying illustration will give a good idea of the general effect of a room so decorated.

      It is also fit and proper that the dining room should be well decorated on Christmas day. Ropes of evergreen, which can either be made at home with very little trouble or purchased from the dealers, should be suspended from the chandelier in the center of the room and caught up at its four different corners. The frames of the pictures should also be decorated with greens, and if there happens to be any old Dutch plates hanging on the walls a very pretty effect can be obtained by surrounding them with a holly wreath. These wreaths should be so made that the green will be on the outside of the circle and the berries inside next to the plates.

      Another unique idea is to have a number of well made holly wreaths in which to set the plates on the table during the Christmas dinner. Somewhere about the room, of course, should be the indispensable spray of mistletoe. If it is put on the chandelier over the table, the best part of the Christmas celebration is likely to be missed, as one can scarcely expect a young lady to climb up on a table, no matter how much she --well, we need not say the rest, but it stands to reason that the portiere or the arch over the door is the best place for the white berried parasite.

      Holly wreaths should also be hung in the different windows. In doing this a very fine wire should be used, tying the wreath to the window fastener so that it will hang exactly in the middle of the lower casement.     

Novel ways of decorating with cotton and bling today. Watch Annabelle's Cotton Candy Christmas Tree. The tree is white and flocked and filled to the brim with sweet long lasting treats!

More Decorating With Cotton:  

• From Snowy White Chairs to a Pimped Out Staircase: How to Decorate Like a Celeb This Christmas
• Ultimate Christmas Room Inspiration!
• How to flock a Christmas tree
• Cotton Batting Christmas Ornaments
• Craft an Old World Cotton Batting Santa