The wassail-bowl—one cannot leave the subject of English Yuletide feasting without a few words upon this beloved beaker of hot spiced ale and toasted apples (“lambswool”). Wassail is [286]derived from the Anglo-Saxon wes hál = be whole, and wassailing is in its essence the wishing of a person's very good health. The origin of drinking healths is not obvious; perhaps it may be sacramental: the draught may have been at first a means of communion with some divinity, and then its consumption may have come to be regarded not only as benefiting the partaker, but as a rite that could be performed for the welfare of another person. Apart from such speculations, we may note the frequent mention of wassailing in old English carols of the less ecclesiastical type; the singers carried with them a bowl or cup which they expected their wealthier neighbours to fill with drink.[{13}] Sometimes the bowl was adorned with ribbons and had a golden apple at the top,[{14}] and it is a noteworthy fact that the box with the Christmas images, mentioned in Chapter IV. (p. [118]), is sometimes called “the Vessel [Wassail] Cup.”[{15}]
The various Christmas dishes of Europe would form an interesting subject for exhaustive study. To suggest a religious origin for each would be going too far, for merely economic considerations must have had much to do with the matter, but it is very probable that in some cases they are relics of sacrifices or sacraments.
The pig is a favourite food animal at Christmas in other countries than our own, a fact probably connected with sacrificial customs. In Denmark and Sweden a pig's head was one of the principal articles of the great Christmas Eve repast.[{16}] In Germany it is a fairly widespread custom to kill a pig shortly before Christmas and partake of it on Christmas Day; its entrails and bones and the straw which has been in contact with it are supposed to have fertilizing powers.[{17}] In Roumania a pig is the Christmas animal par excellence,[{18}] in Russia pigs’ trotters are a favourite dish at the New Year,[{19}] and in every Servian house roast pig is the principal Christmas dish.[{20}]
In Upper Bavaria there is a custom which almost certainly has at its root a sacrifice: a number of poor people club together at Christmas-time and buy a cow to be killed and eaten at a common feast.[{21}]
More doubtful is the sacrificial origin of the dishes of certain [287]special kinds of fish on Christmas Eve. In Saxony and Thuringia herring salad is eaten—he who bakes it will have money all the year—and in many parts of Germany and also in Styria carp is then consumed.[{22}] Round Ercé in Brittany the family dish is cod.[{23}] In Italy the cenone or great supper held on Christmas Eve has fish for its animal basis, and stewed eels are particularly popular. It is to be remembered that in Catholic countries the Vigil of the Nativity is a fast, and meat is not allowed upon it; this alone would account for the prominence of fish on Christmas Eve.
We have already come across peculiar cakes eaten at various pre-Christmas festivals; at Christmas itself special kinds of bread, pastry, and cakes abound on the Continent, and in some cases at least may have a religious origin.
In France various sorts of cakes and loaves are known at the season of Noël. In Berry on Christmas morning loaves called cornabœux, made in the shape of horns or a crescent, are distributed to the poor. In Lorraine people give one another cognés or cogneux, a kind of pastry in the shape of two crescents back to back, or else long and narrow in form and with a crescent at either end. In some parts of France the cornabœux are known as hôlais, and ploughmen give to the poor as many of these loaves as they possess oxen and horses.[{24}] These horns may be substitutes for a sacrifice of oxen.
Sometimes the French Christmas cakes have the form of complete oxen or horses—such were the thin unleavened cakes sold in the early nineteenth century at La Châtre (Indre). In the neighbourhood of Chartres there are cochenilles and coquelins in animal and human shapes. Little cakes called naulets are sold by French bakers, and actually represent the Holy Child. With them may be compared the coignoles of French Flanders, cakes of oblong form adorned with the figure of the infant Jesus in sugar.[{25}] Sometimes the Christmas loaf or cake in France has healing properties; a certain kind of cake in Berry and Limousin is kept all through the year, and a piece eaten in sickness has marvellous powers.[{26}]
Cortet gives an extraordinary account of a French custom [288]connected with eating and drinking. At Mouthe (Doubs) there used to be brought to the church at Christmas pies, cakes, and other eatables, and wine of the best. They were called the “De fructu,” and when at Vespers the verse “De fructu ventris tui ponam super sedem tuam” was reached, all the congregation made a rush for these refreshments, contended for them, and carried them off with singing and shouting.[{27}]
The most remarkable of Christmas cakes or loaves is the Swedish and Danish “Yule Boar,” a loaf in the form of a boar-pig, which stands on the table throughout the festal season. It is often made from the corn of the last sheaf of the harvest, and in it Dr. Frazer finds a clear expression of the idea of the corn-spirit as embodied in pig form. “Often it is kept till sowing-time in spring, when part of it is mixed with the seed corn and part given to the ploughman and plough-horses or plough-oxen to eat, in the expectation of a good harvest.” In some parts of the Esthonian island of Oesel the cake has not the form of a boar, but bears the same name, and on New Year's Day is given to the cattle. In other parts of the island the “Yule Boar” is actually a little pig, roasted on Christmas Eve and set up on the table.[{28}]