Wassail – Prayers for trees and fruitfulness 

4th January 2025

Wassailing and the blessing of fruit trees traditionally takes place at some point during January – after the solstice when the days are growing longer and before the trees fully form their buds. Wassail means good health!

For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Isaiah 55:12

A reading Genesis 2: 4b, 8-9, 15-17

In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there planted the human whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Lord God took and placed the human in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’

Lord God who first planted the garden of Eden,

bless the gardens we too tend.

Wassail!

Lord God who made every tree to grow,

bless the trees we have planted.

Wassail!

Lord God who gave us trees with fruits pleasing to the eye and good to eat,

bless these trees with such fruits.

Wassail!

Lord God who made us to be your gardeners,

bless the work of our hands.

Wassail!

Lord God who created birds and insects, bugs and all manner of creatures 

to be our companions and helpers in the garden,

bless them one and all.

Wassail!

Lord God whose earth produces food in due season,

may we share that equally and generously with all our kith and kin.

Wassail!

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” Revelation 22:1-2