Christmastide lasted for twelve days, just as in the song. The Twelfth Night also commemorated Epiphany, the coming of the Magi to see Jesus. Its celebration required a feast that, over time, accumulated some unique customs.
Twelfth Night parties required costumes, particularly eye-covering masks, so they were probably the origin of the English tradition of “fancy dress balls” with guests in costume. Some of the games and plays would need costumed and masked roles, so these costumes could be worn to the party. They think that the images of mummers wearing animal heads especially applied to Twelfth Night. In Spanish tradition, they had a costume parade known as the Cabalgata de Reyes, the parade of kings.
It was already typical at Christmas parties to elect one guest as Lord of Misrule, a sort of Master of Ceremonies. But at a Twelfth Night party, they needed a King and Queen “of the Bean.” In full form, the ceremony required two cakes, the King’s Cake and the Queen’s Cake, to be sliced up for guests, and in each cake a dried bean or some other inedible prize would be discovered in one piece. The finders of the bean became King and Queen.
King’s Cake recipes are still going strong and vary by region. In northern France and Belgium, it’s a galette, a puff pastry with almond frangipane filling. Bakeries sell paper crowns with the cake, and each one has a fève, that is, a fava bean—only it’s probably a tiny figure of the Christ Child. In Mediterranean France and Portugal, the cake more like a sweet raisin bread, ring-shaped and decorated with candied fruit. In German-speaking countries, the cake is baked as a ring and the “fève” is an almond.
Spain’s Roscón de Reyes is a ring-shaped sweet bread, but it is typically sliced in half, horizontally, and filled with sweet cream. It is often decorated with candied dried fruits, and it always has either a bean or a tiny Christ-Child. They connect hiding the baby figure with the flight of Mary and Joseph from Herod, down to Egypt. The person who receives the baby figure in his or her piece is supposed to bring it to church on Candlemas, the February date that commemorates forty days after the birth, when Mary brought Jesus to the Temple.
The important drink for Twelfth Night was Wassail. Wassail means “be well” in Anglo-Saxon, so it originally served as a greeting. Ale, cider or wine with honey, ginger, and nutmeg was heated and then garnished with roasted crab apple pulp that floated on the top. It was used to greet and toast guests.
But Twelfth Night had another ritual using the Wassail: greeting the trees. In the country, people bundled into cloaks and went outside, where they stood in a ring around a tree. If they were in an orchard, they chose the oldest tree that bore the most fruit. If in a forest, the largest tree with the most cones. In town or castle, they may have used a tree in a tub of earth or an artificial tree.
Madeleine Pelner Cosman, in her book Medieval Holidays and Festivals, gives us the ritual:
Twelve wassailers surround the tree, forming a circle. They carry large glasses or tankards. These are half-filled with apple cider, with three small pieces of roasted caraway seedcake floating on the surface. Rhythmically, the wassailers walk around the tree, chanting this rhyme:Hail to thee, old apple tree! / From every bough / Give us apples enow / Hatsful, capsful, / Bushel, bushel, sacksful / And our arms full too.
Lifting their glasses to the tree, they toast it and shout “wassail.” They take a few sips of the cider. Then each eats one piece of the seedcake and places the other two on the branches of the tree or below it in the tub. A second time they slowly march around the tree, chanting their rhyme. At this circling, the tree drinks. Each wassailer pours the remaining cider into the tub surrounding the tree’s roots. A third chanting procession around the tree ends with wild shouts of “hurrah,” stamping, shaking of noise-makers, and banging on the empty cider tankards.
Also out in the countryside, on Twelfth Night they lit bonfires. The ritual carried on the theme of twelve, which seemed a particularly lucky number. One large bonfire was ringed by twelve smaller fires. The large middle fire was known as Old Meg. In an indoors setting, candles and a large candelabra could substitute for the fires. Guests stood around the fires or candles, shouting “Wassail” as each was lit.
It’s obvious that these customs stemmed from older pagan times, and some other customs and games have the same feeling. For example, six guests wearing ox horns (or even ox-head masks) and boots with bells danced in a circle around the tree. The King and Queen of the Bean select the Best Beast, and master of ceremonies known as the Surveyor crown its horn with a cake that has a hole in the middle. As the “ox” tries to throw the cake off, people bet where it will land: in front of the ox, or behind. After it falls, the guests are served miniature doughnut-shaped seed and raisin cakes. It’s clearly some kind of fertility rite, but it was acceptable in Christian times because the oxen were present at Christ’s birth in the stable.
The appearance of a band of Mummers to act the usual play was announced by the arrival of a Hobby-Horse. In the countryside, this may have been no more than a man riding a broomstick horse with a painted wooden head. In classier places, it was a wicker body that fitted over a man’s body with a harness. The wicker would be covered by embroidered horse blankets, while the horse’s head would look at much like a real horse as they could devise. This kind of outfit is known in contemporary England as a Pantomime Horse. Kate Beckinsale is fond of them.
The standard Mummers’ play could be dressed up by some extraordinary theme. The boy king Richard II was visited by a group of Mummers that included cardinals, a pope, and African princes with gifts. Another medieval court function was visited by Mummers representing King David and the Twelve Tribes. King Henry VI met a group of Mummers dressed as grotesque peasants who brought their comic marital disputes for his judgment.
In one way or another, St. George would kill the Turkish Knight or the Dragon, and a Doctor would come and bring it back to life. Some Mummers would act out the battle scene with mock swordfighting dances that eventually became the Morris Dancers of today’s English folk scene. The fight became more and more symbolic, until it only had sticks clacked against each other or even white scarves standing in for the sticks.
After the Mummers, they played a game called Oranges and Lemons. The name signals that it was a later-developing song and game, since in early medieval times, Spain was not yet exporting citrus to the north. But once Arab-settled Andalusia had a well-developed fruit trade, they could count on citrus for winter parties; then orange and lemon flavored the Wassail.
Two guests were ready to be Orange and Lemon, dressed or marked in appropriate colors. They joined their hands in an arch, the way children are taught to play “London Bridge is falling down.” The other guests filed under the arch while they all sang the song that Orwell quotes in 1984: “Oranges and Lemons! Say the Bells of St. Clements.” Six of the great London churches had a line about their bells, and at the end, the song ran, “Here comes a candle to light you to bed, Here comes a chopper to chop off your head! Last, last, last, last, last man’s head!” Then the arch dropped down to catch the person passing under, as in the “London Bridge” game. Those who were caught had to line up behind (that is, next to) either Orange or Lemon, and eventually when all were lined up as arches, they had a tug of war.
At midnight, the last event required most lights in the hall to be put out. In a great hall, they rigged ropes and pulleys to float a candelabrum across the ceiling. In a humbler place, the candle might be held aloft on a pole. This represented the Star of Bethlehem, and in came the Three Kings to find the Christ Child. An actor playing King Herod tried to stop them with some shouting and shoving, but outwitting and dodging him, the Kings found their way to a nativity scene at one end of the hall. There, they could give their gifts. This ceremony ushered in Epiphany, the Feast of the Magi, as the new day dawned.
Much credit goes to Madeleine Pelner Cosman. Medieval Holidays and Festivals: A Calendar of Celebrations. New York, Scribner, 1981.