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WassailingWassailing is the practice of going door-to-door singing Christmas carols and requesting in return wassail or some other form of refreshment. In modern times it is most commonly known through reference in various traditional Christmas carols (e.g., "Here we come a-wassailing / among the leaves so green"). The practice however 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 neighbors 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 a carol such as We wish you a merry christmas can be made sense of. 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." The traditional practice of wassailing came to an end with the development of industrial capitalism and a wealthy and powerful bourgeois class with little interest in continuing this age old holiday tradition of symbolic exchange they saw as undermining mundane economic exchange in the market economy. In cider-producing areas of England, such as Sussex, wassailing also referred to drinking (and singing) the health of trees in the hopes that they might better thrive.
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