Christmas Drinks
Christmas is celebrated at the time of the winter solstice, and in the passage from one year to the next. The hopes and fears triggered by these two dates in the world's calendar have shaped the customs that cluster around Christmas itself, while the joy of that festival has cast a glow over the entire season. In the course of centuries, many ingenious ways have been devised to defy the darkness, feast on the bounty of the year's harvest, and perform good-luck rituals, half in jest and half in earnest, to ensure health, happiness, and abundance in the next twelve months. Christmas calls for a tightening of social bonds, and an enlargement of social sympathies. Drink, with its power to raise spirits and relax constraints, plays an important part in the characteristic ceremonies of the holiday.
A touch of extravagance, indeed excess, matches the spirit of the season and marks many traditional Christmas drinks. France and Spain may be content with a fine champagne or the best wine available, but other countries favor more elaborate concoctions. Wassail and punch in Britain, heated mulled wine in cold northern countries, and their cooling equivalents in the warmer south have one characteristic in common. They are mixed drinks, in which some combination of sugar, spice, and fruit juice has been added to the principal ingredient, whether that be ale, cider, or wine, while in certain cases the whole has been given an extra kick with a shot of brandy or bourbon, rum or gin. Eggnog, the old American favorite, starts life as a blend of eggs and cream, but this blameless nursery food is transformed into nourishment for grownups by a potent blend of sugar, spice, and spirit.
Whatever its components, the Christmas drink has ceremonial and symbolic functions. It is a pledge of goodwill to present company and absent friends. Indeed, the name of the oldest toast in Britain, "Wassail," is derived from the Middle English words for "be well." Sometimes the ritual takes the form of toast and response; sometimes the drink is shared as a loving cup passed from one person to the next so that each can share its contents in a companionable way. In local traditions throughout the Christian world, wine has been blessed at Christmas by the church, and cider has been poured on apple trees to encourage next year's harvest. The permitted breakdown of normal social barriers in this special season is played out in small, symbolic dramas. The master of a household will prepare eggnog with his own hands and offer it to his servants. Strangers may carry a wassail bowl to any door and assume the right of entry and reward.
There is nothing immutable about any Christmas tradition. At the core is always joyful celebration, but the ways in which that sentiment is expressed are infinitely variable, depending from age to age and place to place on ingredients locally at hand, and on the tastes and fashions of the time. Anything may be acceptable, as long as the message stays the same: "Merry Christmas!"
Bibliography
Bickerdyke, John. The Curiosities of Ale and Beer: An Entertaining History (1889). London: Spring Books, 1965.
Chambers, Robert. The Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Activities. London and Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers, 1864. See entries on "Punch" and "Wassail."
Edwards, Gillian. Hogmanay and Tiffany: The Names of Feasts and Fasts. London: Geoffrey Bles,1970.
Gayre, G. R. Wassail! In Mazers of Mead: The Intriguing History of the Beverage of Kings. London: Phillimore and Company, 1948.
Irving, Washington. Old Christmas: From the Sketchbook of Washington Irving. London: Macmillan, 1876.
Levy, Paul. The Feast of Christmas. London: Kyle Cathie,1992.
Miles, Clement A. Christmas Customs and Tradition. New York: Dover Publications, 1976. Originally published in 1912.
Nissenbaum, Stephen. The Battle for Christmas. New York: Vintage, 1997.
Pimlott, J. A. R. The Englishman's Christmas: A Social History. Hassocks, Sussex, UK: Harvester Press, 1978.
—Bridget Ann Henisch
