If Christmas was fun for ordinary people in Georgian Wales, New Year was a riot! Like the other major spirit nights Calan Geaf and Calan Mai, divination, making charms and the interpretation of omens marked the period around the year’s turning, with ritual food, drink, ceremony and verse employed to foretell and in some cases even affect, the future year. Wassailing, which had been going on for at least a week by then and in some cases since the sixth of December, intensified and we find specific rituals such as Calennig, Y Mari Lwyd and the Wren Box being practised.

The Gregorian instead of Julian calendar was adopted in 1752 and from this point the exact date on which traditional rites took place, always somewhat elastic, became very confused. In some areas, for instance, Hen Galan was celebrated instead of the New Year until the 1950s.

Harvest was long over, days were short, nights long and animals that hadn’t been slaughtered for winter were often inside.

There was little to be done with the frozen or sodden soil over the winter and it made sense to conserve energy and keep animals and people inside. Contrasting with this reality therefore, the wassailing tradition, where groups of friends met out in the dark, visiting neighbours or taverns to make mischief, call down blessings for the year ahead and beg food and drink, must have offered a welcome relief.

As at Christmas, football was played on New Year’s Day. The ‘game’ started early in the morning with people on foot and on horseback. It was a sort of murderous rugby with no rules. By nightfall the lads were drunk. Many were injured, some even killed! However, most of these violent pursuits, common in the 18th Century, were discouraged by early Methodists and banned in later centuries.

All outstanding debts had to be paid by New Year and it was unlucky to lend anything, even a candle on this day.

Rising early on the first day of the year would become a habit carried on throughout the next 12 months, and it mattered greatly to the next year’s fortune who was the first to be seen or to enter the house past midnight.

In Pen-Coed, Glamorgan, it was unlucky to see a red-haired man first. In Cardiganshire Dafydd, Ifan, Sion, Siencyn, Sian, Sioned, Mair and Marged were lucky, good fortune likely to come to those who saw people bearing these names first.

In Montgomeryshire however, if a woman had been thoughtless enough to call at the house straight after midnight, young boys had to be ‘paraded’ all through the property to ‘break the witch’.

Calennig was collected on New Year’s Eve. Carols and blessings were taken from house to house in exchange for gifts of food and money. Often, wassailers collecting calennig carried decorated apples.

Two of the most colourful wassailing practices involved the Mari Lwyd and the wren box. The ‘Grey Mary’ was a horse’s skull, dressed in bells and ribbons and attended by an ‘ostler’ with a whip and ‘clowns’ in fancy dress, some of them men dressed as women. Accompanied by a crowd of musicians and singers they went from homestead to homestead, tavern to tavern, ‘jousting’ with the inhabitants in verse until they were let in. Then the Mari would lunge at and kiss the women, trying to get under their skirts and demanding ‘Cusan, neu ceiniog?’ whilst the clowns created havoc. Sometimes these characters bashed each other with bensom brooms, though, as they’d stuffed their clothes with straw, were seldom injured. We still do it, particularly in South Wales, though there’s evidence of the practice from across the country at one time. Horse cults are a relatively widespread tradition and the origins of the Welsh Mari Lwyd are elusive. Some believe she may be associated with the night ’mare’ female monster who was supposed to land on people and beat them to suffocation.

As strange but perhaps lesser known, is the perllan in which a live or stuffed wren is imprisoned in a special box and taken from house to house. If a wren could not be caught, sometimes a sparrow was substituted. Again it was usually adult men who performed the ritual and there were elaborate set verses to accompany the tour.

The wren party often visited homes of those who had been married in the last year, groaning ironically under the burden of their heavy ‘bier’. As with many wassailing rituals, revellers offered blessings for the year ahead in terms of verse charms for fruitful crops and people, but there was also a more sinister edge. If the welcome was insufficient and there wasn’t the required food, drink or small gifts, this curse was uttered by the visitors:

Gwynt ffralwm ddelo’n hwthwm,

I ddroi’r t? a’i wyneb fyny.

(May a raging wind come suddenly to turn the house upside down).

Wren boxes, with their barred windows and ribbons, can still be seen in museums such as St Fagan’s. The wren cult was widespread and is known in Ireland, Brittany, the Isle of Man and even Essex!

Twelfth Night was the last major event of the season and, like many Christmas practices, was perhaps influenced by the Roman Saturnalia festival. Traditionally people gave presents, wore garlands of evergreen and waited upon servants. The shortest day of the year passed on 21 December and was celebrated with candles and bonfires. Twelfth Night became the time in which master and servant socialised, swapping roles for one night only. A cake, similar to a Christmas cake, was often baked, and a special 12-handled bowl was used for this celebration. Filled with cakes, apples, sugar and hot spiced beer it was passed around the company. Hidden inside either the cake or the hot ale pot was a pea and bean, the finders being queen and king for the night, able to make even people of a higher status than themselves do their bidding.

Twelfth Night was also Distyll y Wyliau for many and it was important to take the greenery down and burn it against bad luck.

The huge Yule log which had lasted (hopefully) since Christmas Eve was extinguished, some of it kept to burn next year and ashes to be added to the first hopper of corn at the spring sowing to bring good luck.

With the coming of Candlemas on the second of February, winter was at an end and the hard work of the agricultural year would begin again.

• Author Jane Blank’s two historical novels from Y Lolfa, The Shadow of Nanteos and Nanteos: The Dipping Pool are set in Georgian Cardiganshire at Plas Nanteos, now a country house hotel. Ranging wide from fine drawing room to conjuror’s cottage, they are steeped in the ritual, magic and conflict of this mysterious world.