Little Women: Warmth, Wassail, and Everything We Need for a Wonderful Christmas

Here we come a-wassailing
Among the leaves so green;
Here we come a-wand’ring
So fair to be seen.

“here we come a-wassailing,” c. 1860¹

Little Women is a book about winter.

Not of the drear, white days that stretch into oblivion, tumbling into one another along with the snow, but rather, it is about the warmth of winter. For there is a certain warmth that can only be felt while the rest of the world lies cold – and it is with this tender embrace that Little Women captivates its readers.

With the turn of a page, you’re invited into the March home and welcomed in with open arms. Four sisters – the titular “little women” – are some of the most wholesome literary companions to be found on library shelves.

With a winsome tone like Anne of Green Gables and a domestic plot like those favored by Jane Austen, Little Women is a wonderful read best enjoyed with a cup of wassail.

…but what in the world is wassail??

A Cup of Christmas Cheer

Wassail is a warm, spiced cider drink that became linked with Little Women through a film adaptation of the novel. (It’s worth noting that the novel was originally published in two parts and is sometimes separated into Little Women and Good Wives; the 1994 film adaption covers both, and many printed editions of Little Women contain both volumes as a single entity. Our focus today is primarily with Part One.)

In the film, there is an iconic scene where the March sisters – Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy – sing “Here We Come A-Wassailing.” While not part of the original text, the song and tradition align with the time period, and the movie scene fits the cozy vibes of the book perfectly!

The word “wassail” likely derives from Old English and means to be hale or in good health. In other words, it’s like a toast to one’s longevity. The earliest British “wassailers” were pagan revelers who sang in orchards to ward off evil spirits and ensure a good harvest. Once the singing was done, they would enjoy drinking cider from a communal wassail bowl.²

Eventually, the tradition morphed into Christmastime carolers strolling up to the house of their feudal lord, offering songs and blessings in return for seasonal gifts like figgy pudding (“…and we won’t go until we get some!”).³

As the years went on, the wassailing song simply became a contemporary Christmas carol, sung for the sake of liking the song, although enjoying a hot drink after caroling was – and is always – a fantastic addition to the festivities!

While wassail recipes are about as varied as the history of wassailing itself, ours is a particularly yummy variant with apples, oranges, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. Sweet and piping hot, it’s the perfect beverage for cozy nights in with the family, a film, or a good book. We like to think the March family would enjoy it, too!

Merry Marches

Louisa May Alcott’s story of the March family was first serialized in a magazine. It was met with great success, and children and adults alike waited eagerly for each new installment. The installments of Part One were subsequently gathered into a single volume and released in 1868, just three years after the conclusion of the Civil War.

The book was both a product of the war and a balm for the wounds caused by it.

“It found a most responsive reading public…who, like the March women, had survived the struggle and were beginning to look back at the war with less bitter recollections,” explains English teacher David Curtis. “And, too, it expressed an optimism about the future that was free of rancor.”⁴

But Alcott’s book was a look back at more than just the war; it was a look back at her own life and her own family. Hailing from a group of four sisters herself, the engaging domestic saga of the March family paralleled many of Alcott’s own experiences, resulting in a work that, if not entirely factual, is certainly semi-autobiographic.⁵

Perhaps most intriguing is the conflict within the story. There are no blazing guns or the ransacking of a town like in Gone With The Wind. The tension is a quiet sort and largely internal.

“The rebels the girls must fight are clearly identified in [the] first two chapters: discontent, selfishness, quarrelsomeness, bad temper, overthinking on worldly things,” writes Judith Fetterly in a journal article for Feminist Studies. “The success of their campaign depends on their requiring one central weapon: self-control.”⁶

It is in the growing of the girls, in their small yet triumphant steps toward betterment, that the novel finds its success. There’s nothing so wonderful in reading as investing in a character and watching them grow, and Alcott’s book delivers this fourfold.

The Gift of Little Women

With Part One opening and closing during scenes of Christmas, the characters’ pilgrimages from selfish to self-sacrificial remind us that during the holiday season (and every season of life), three things rise above all else: family, love, and faith.

Early on in the book, the Marches declare:

“Rich or poor, we will keep together and be happy in one another.”⁵

Little Women

Throughout the book, Mrs. March is a guiding light to her four girls, offering gentle encouragement, wisdom, and comfort, while the four sisters all act as confidants for one another. When one member is weak, the others rise to give her strength. Similarly, even the next-door neighbors, a grandfather and his teenage grandson, are adopted into the March fold.

Old Mr. Laurence acts as a fatherly figure while the girls’ own father is away at war, and grandson “Laurie” is a much-needed breath of fun and distraction in the midst of their anxiety. The favor is repaid as the girls bring new light into Mr. Laurence’s somewhat embittered life, and they provide Laurie with true friendship in his relative isolation.

At times, the girls have sisterly spats with each other and even fights with Laurie – but they always mend things quickly, unwilling to lose the company of the people they hold dear.

The Marches and their friends look after one another, and as the girls mature, they do so out of love rather than any desire for reward or praise. In the same way, we should cherish our own friends and family, be quick to forgive, and even quicker to show we care. After all…

Love casts out fear, and gratitude can conquer pride.⁶

Little Women

The Marches’ relational bonds help them weather the roughest storms and the deepest griefs. Their thankfulness for each other and gratitude toward their neighbors helps supress the stirrings of vanity felt by Meg and Amy. As their concern for others grows, their fretting over gloves and bows diminishes.

When you love someone, there is no contest of status; only the urge to prove how much you care.

But, as Mrs. March instructed Jo, there is more to care about than just one’s family and friends – there is also faith, which should be clung to with the deepest sincerity.

Go to God with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows, as freely and confidingly as you come to your mother.⁷

Little Women

As all of the sisters work to be self-controlled and honorable “little women,” they don’t do it alone. Each one, especially Jo, leaned on their faith in God to accomplish what they could not do on their own, like learning to be humble or finding peace despite their worries.

In one tender scene, Amy is sent from home to avoid catching scarlet fever, and she feels afraid and lonely. However, she remembers what her mother said about God, and she “turned to the strong and tender Friend, whose fatherly love most closely surrounds His little children.”⁷

Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, is a wonderful time to rekindle a faith that may have grown dim over the course of a long year.

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Little Women is wholesome and uplifting – the perfect wintertime book! Indeed, the Marches’ dutiful home-making creates a haven for readers, a place to come in from the cold.

We hope that you’ll enjoy visiting the Marches – in book or film form – this Christmas, accompanied by a steaming cup of hearty wassail!

Here we come a-wassailing, among the leaves so green…

We love this hearty traditional version of wassail, but you can also make an easy version without alcohol by using apple cider, orange juice, and lemon juice! You can also mix it up and experiment with flavors like vanilla bean, cranberry juice, white peppercorns, and allspice berries. For a really pretty cup of wassail, you can use star anise as a garnish. No matter how you make it, wassail is sure to keep you feeling warm and toasty!

Merry Christmas from our MouseEars TV family to yours!

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Featured photo: MouseEars TV Creative Team

Works Cited

5. Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (New York, New York: Puffin Books, 2014), 783.

6. Ibid., 306.

7. Ibid., 283.