wassails

While the Lord of Misrule led the reveling, banishing the darkness, as wassails party away evil spirits, it's Malvolio who bears the burden for all those future aspirations by becoming a scapegoat and the embodiment of gloomy superstitious fears, that is up until the point where the ridicule and the jokes turn sour.

In praise of … Twelfth Night | Editorial 2011

If the macaronic inclusion of ecclesiastical Latin is too sober for your holiday, you can always set the Wayback Machine to last year's wassails.

Archive 2008-12-01 Matthew Guerrieri 2008

If the macaronic inclusion of ecclesiastical Latin is too sober for your holiday, you can always set the Wayback Machine to last year's wassails.

Drede ye nought, sayd the aungell bryght Matthew Guerrieri 2008

My personal preference is for wassails — if you're not sure what a wassail involves, the almost always suspect Wikipedia actually nails this one: Wassailing is the practice of going door-to-door singing Christmas carols until paid to go away and leave the occupants in peace.

Knock knock Matthew Guerrieri 2007

My personal preference is for wassails — if you're not sure what a wassail involves, the almost always suspect Wikipedia actually nails this one: Wassailing is the practice of going door-to-door singing Christmas carols until paid to go away and leave the occupants in peace.

Archive 2007-12-01 Matthew Guerrieri 2007

The City Opera chorus sang with heft and precision, even such unforgiving lines as "Antony, leave thy lascivious wassails."

Drama in New York, Off-Stage and On 2009

The ruling desire of his life was, that by the proceeds of his intellectual labour he might acquire an ample demesne, with a suitable mansion of his own, and thus in some measure realise in his own person, and in those of his representatives, somewhat of the territorial importance of those olden barons, whose wassails and whose feuds he had experienced delight in celebrating.

The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. The Songs of Scotland of the past half century Various

What visions of Christmas feasts and wassails these relics might have awakened in me, had I been left to gaze on them undisturbed, it is impossible to say; but my mind was not permitted to follow its own bent.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 Various

Beneath her she saw the cobble-stones all scratched and marred with gray bruises from the horses 'hoofs, a faded purple ribbon dropped from the mandolin of a minstrel, three slightly imperfect wassails and a trencher with a nick on the rim, all that had not been used of the wild boar at last night's feast, a peach-stone like

Love Conquers All Robert Benchley 1917

The office butler accordingly was very lucrative, because the guests at such wassails were in the habit of bribing him to purchase the liberty of drinking as little as they pleased or dared.

The Legends of the Jews — Volume 4 Louis Ginzberg 1913