HAVE you got your halls decked with boughs of holly?

If not, you'd better get a move on - "fala lala la, la la la!"

Weird lyrics are not the exclusive preserve of pop idols. Have you noticed how easily people sing words which would have their neighbours giving them funny looks if they simply said them out loud? "...Someone left the cake out in the rain..." the karaoke singer warbles happily.

Christmas carols can be just as confusing.

As a child, I used to wonder why Good King Wensill was always the last to look out, and why he apparently never looked out after the Feast of Stephen.

Matters were complicated by having American cousins of German origin whose surname was Wenzel. A little friend with a marginally better ear was sure it wasn't Wensill who was looking out, but the good king's "lass".

I would happily have come 'a-wostling', although I had not the remotest idea what it meant.

Something to do with wrestling, perhaps? Illustrated carol books showed beautifully-dressed Victorian children happily a-wostling from door to door in an orderly fashion, so it remained a mystery.

I assumed that, whatever it was, it was a Victorian invention. I wasn't alone in my ignorance.

I grew up in the industrial north-east, before the BBC gave us Carols from King's College, and the correct pronunciation.

For some of my contemporaries, the leaves so green amongst which we a-wostled were also a bit of a mystery. Trees were rare except in public parks; we were more used to tarmac and concrete, and unfamiliar with evergreens.

But we all knew what mistletoe was; 'a mistletoe' was a Christmas decoration made from two wooden barrel hoops - or even three hoops if you were well off.

They were tied together to form the skeleleton of a ball which was decorated with tissue or crepe paper, and tinsel, and hung with sweetmeats and Christmas baubles. We would have thought you were joking if you had told us that mistletoe was a plant.

Mistletoes were particularly popular during the war years when Christmas trees were in short supply. A mistletoe was just the sort of thing Blue Peter presenters would eventually have "made earlier" from two coat hangers and six shining balls - but definitely no sticky-backed plastic.

Sadly, the a-wostling carol never made it into the short list of best-loved tunes with which we serenaded our neighbours in the run-up to Christmas.

We knew all the words of all the verses of the ones we did choose, but mercifully, we generally stuck to Away in a Manger and Silent Night, with The First Noel as an encore, if we hadn't been chased away before then.

This year, for the first time, on December 18, I am hoping to take my grandson on the Journey to Bethlehem, our local carol singing expedition with Mary, Joseph, the donkey and musicians from the town band, which has become a tradition in Kirkbymoorside.

It was started by Sue Dammann, a parishioner of St Chad's, who'd done something similar when she was at school. I'm sure she did not expect that we'd still be doing it quarter of a century later.

I'm also pretty sure that when my daughter declined the offer to be the first 'Mary', as she was not that keen on donkeys, she wouldn't think she would eventually take her own little boy on the same trip.

The churches take it in turns to provide Mary and Joseph, and we have had a succession of donkeys - one so decrepit that Mary had to walk alongside helping Joseph to hold it up - but the same red, shining star, provided by Tony Clark, still leads the procession.

We hope it will be a fine evening; one year it was so cold, even the donkey came into the porch of the Friends' Meeting House at the end, and on another occasion the donkey was taken right down the aisle at All Saints'.

Sue's original idea that we should end up in the courtyard of one of our local pubs or hotels, sadly, never happened. The reason is rather touching: not one publican in the town wanted to be the one who turned Mary and Joseph away when they knocked at the door.

Perhaps they did not want to repeat the oldest PR disaster on record, but to have the inn keeper opening the door wide, and saying with a big smile: "Of course, come on in!" would rather spoil the story. The poshest en-suite doesn't have quite the authentic ring of the stable and the manger.

The best thing about the whole event is that it is essentially 'do it yourself', and everybody is welcome to come and sing.

Many places have a more formal arrangement and carols are sung by the Waits, who do go "wassailing". Waits were originally the nightwatchmen who had sounded their horns or played a tune to mark the passing of the hours.

In the 19th century, the name was given to groups of singers and musicians who performed outside people's houses at Christmas. They carried with them a Wassail Cup, a bowl of spiced ale which they offered in return for money and food.

But this was not a Victorian invention; they were following an ancient custom. Nicholas Culpeper's Herbal, published in 1653, gives a recipe for a Wassail Cup: two cinnamon sticks, four cloves, two blades of mace, one ginger root, four apples, a teaspoon of nutmeg, four ounces of sugar and half a pint each of brown ale and cider.

The greeting "wassail", however, predates the 17th century. Although they offered Christmas greetings, the singers also sang: "God bless you and send you a Happy New Year." And there we have the clue - not Christmas, but New Year. We didn't realise that our "wostling", our attempts at carol singing for our long-suffering neighbours, was a variation on a tradition which predates Christianity.

"Wassail" comes from the Anglo-Saxon greeting "Waes Hael" meaning "Your Good Health". It is the oldest 'toast' in our language, and it goes naturally with a New Year's drink. So raise your glasses: "Waes Hael"!

Updated: 12:17 Wednesday, December 17, 2003