Epiphany

In a flurry of activity and Twitter in-jokes, the Beaker People celebrated Twelfth Night in the traditional manner tonight.

First of all, we dined on our traditional Epiphany meal, Kippers a la Buckingham. We ate these around the Christmas tree, or Yule Besorry in the original Norse tongue. Then we cut it down with loppers, and trimmed it down with clippers before turning into a mulch with the chippers.

Then out to the Orchard for our Wassail.

Wassailing has a long and noble history in the annals of these islands. For full 30 centuries long people have assembled in orchards to sing to the spirits of the apple trees and drink lots of hot cider. In the belief that through this sympathetic magic, the trees will be encouraged to a good crop the following autumn. And to express the truth of the circles of nature, the cycle of the crop, the windmills of your mind, and the need to drink some hot cider when it's cold. And who are we to argue with a tradition like that? In good Beaker fashion we headed out among the trees, armed with mulled cider, toast and Ugg boots, to sing the Beaker Wassail song:

Wassail wassail we are so cold
Our toes are turning black
Hats full, caps full, cups full, buckets full
Why don't traditional songs rhyme?

Then we shot our shotguns into the trees. Or we would have done. But for Health and Safety reasons, we weren't allowed to use shotguns in such a confined space. So we would have used replica guns, or starter guns, but Edith Weston objected to us using any kind of gun-shaped object on the grounds that it was glorifying violence.

So we threw toast at the trees, drank their health, and piled into the Room of Viewing to see the BBC Special "Ooh it's cold". Tradition. Don't you love it?