The Wassail Table
The Book of Christmas, London: 1836
"The New Year's Eve is, in all quarters, looked upon as a time of
rejoicing; and perhaps no night of this merry season is more universally
dedicated to festivity. Men are, for the
most part, met in groups, to hail the coming year with propitiatory
honours; and copious libations are poured to its honour, as if to determine it
to look upon us with a benignant aspect. We generally spend our New Year's Eve
in some such group; but, we confess, it is not every class of wassailers that
will suit us for the occasion.
But, in any case, we have never failed to observe that, as the midnight
hour draws near, a hush falls upon these assemblies;—and when men rise to usher
in the new comer, it is, for the most part, in silence. We do not believe that
moment is ever a merry one. The blithe spirits of the night stand still. The
glasses are full;—but so is the heart—and the eye is strained upon the finger
of the dial whose notes are to sound the arrival, as if held there by a spell.
We do not think that any man, of all that group whom our artist has
represented, could turn his face away from the dial [clock], even by an effort;
—and he who could would be out of place in any assembly of which we made one.
The instant the solemn sounds of the midnight chime have ceased, the
bells from a thousand steeples lift up their merry voices—but they never, at
that moment, found a true echo in our hearts; and the shout which rises from the wassail table, in answer, has ever
seemed to us to want much of the mirth to which it makes such boisterous
pretension."
The Book of Christmas ...by Thomas Kibble Hervey… Illustrations by R.
Seymour. London: 1836
©2015 Patricia Bixler Reber
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