Twelfth Night Celebrated with Cake, Wassail

BunnyHugger, devilbunny; and Chitter, squirrel; joined this year by Austin, coati, hosted their 4th annual Twelfth Night party on January 5 in Meliora Park (S3 E1). Roofus_roo, fairy kangaroo, was crowned King of the Night, and Lou, civet, was Queen. The festivities eventually moved to Dragon Park (S3 E2) where party-goers carried out a traditional wassailing of the orchard.

BunnyHugger provided the traditional fare of Twelfth Night, a cake and lambswool (a spiced apple punch), while Dragoncat, feline dragon, brought wine and sparkling juice to add to the table. The cake contained a bean and a pea, designating the King and Queen, and slices were distributed to all who wished to partake. Roofus_roo and Lou ended up with the bean and pea, respectively, and were thus dubbed “King Roofus the Gentle and Queen Lou the Inscrutable” by BunnyHugger.

Roofus_roo seemed shy about using his royal powers, but Lou perched atop Beltrami, balloon rabbit, and gestured for everyone to entertain him. BunnyHugger put on swing music and and got up to obey the Queen by dancing with Austin. Xor, foxtaur, put on Valleyminks, mink, and did an east coast swing step, and Beltrami twirled. The dancers looked to the Queen; Lou’s reply was “vittervit,” which was taken to be approval.

After the dance, a group of revelers brought the bowl of lambswool to the adjacent Dragon Park to wassail the fruit trees there – a ritual to encourage the trees to bear fruit in the coming year by singing to them and pouring some of the lambswool over their roots. Although this is traditionally done with apple trees, the proximity of Dragon Park’s cherry trees has made them a popular target for past Twelfth Night parties held at Meliora Park.

BunnyHugger loudly sang a traditional orchard wassail song, causing Tategoi, the goldfish-koi hybrid who owns and resides in Dragon Park, to come to the edge of the pond.

“I did tell you, yes, that these trees never bear fruit?” Tategoi said, noting that the partygoers’ attempts to wassail the cherry trees in past years had not changed this fact. Nevertheless, everyone sprinkled lambswool over the cherry trees’ roots and hailed them before returning to Meliora Park.