Happy New Year!

Twelfth night may fall on the 5th or 6th January, depending on your beliefs, but the weekend has seen most of us put away our Christmas decorations for another year. I just love to walk or drive around the streets admiring the twinkly lights and, tonight, they are few and far between. It seems a shame that all the light festivals are over when we still have two months of winter to plough through.

With that in mind I have been looking to see what other festivals are on the horizon and, hey presto, the celebration of wassailing is actually today, 5th January. This is a ceremony to bless the fruit trees, particularly apple. Drinking and loud singing to the health of the trees takes place with a Wassail King and Queen leading the procession through the orchards, offering a piece of wassail-soaked toast to the biggest and best tree. This is an offering for a bountiful harvest come the autumn. It is a noisy procession in order to wake the tree spirits and frighten away the evil demons.

This tradition goes back in history but is still carried out in the south of England where orchards are plentiful for Apple and cider production. In these days of trying to cut down on air miles and imports and becoming more environmentally sustainable we should all hope for a bountiful British harvest.

"Wassail" comes from the Old Norse "ves heill" which means "be healthy." That's a good toast for anyone at the start of 2020.

Share and share alike!

By all accounts, this is the year of the apple. No, not in a Chinese New Year kind of way but by the fact that the apple harvest has been a bumper one of unblemished and plentiful apples. This is good news ... remember believing "an apple a day keeps the doctor away"? Not only are they one of our five-a-day but there are numerous ways of cooking apples as well as crunching them au naturale! Another bonus is that there will be lashings of amber liquid for a cider drinker like myself!

When I was growing up we had a James Greaves apple tree at the bottom of the garden and every year the family would go outside on a dry, sunny autumnal Sunday to ceremoniously pick the fruits which would then be individually wrapped in newspaper and placed in the loft to store through the winter months. A friend has recently revealed that during her school days she would refer to the 3 apple trees in their garden as the orchard. I can't say I blame her. When you're young everything seems bigger and the very word orchard conjures up heavily laden branches bowing down and trailing its fruits onto the wild flower meadow at its feet.

In our family everything was shared whether it was a packet of sweets, a bun or indeed an apple. My parents had learned of a fair method of doing this from friends. The rule was "you cut, I'll choose" and so my sister and I learnt to cut precise halves from a very early age. For my last birthday she sent me this card as a reminder (and possibly a way of showing one-up-manship to her little sister!)

Another friend's mum would hold pudding bowls aloft and tell her daughters to choose which hand without the advantage of seeing what and how much was in them. My own children were often told to share nicely whether it was food or toys. Funnily enough whilst googling apples and sharing whilst writing this blog I have come full circle. apple.com say "everything's better when shared, and sharing has never been easier" whilst persuading us to take up Family Sharing on our devices. It's a very clever way of marketing their products by honing in on our values and, they do have a point. Everything is better when shared!