Toast on the trees - It must mean the ancient custom of Wassailing!

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Wassailing is a Twelfth Night tradition that has been practised in Britain for centuries. It has its roots in a pagan custom of visiting orchards to sing to the trees and spirits in the hope of ensuring a good harvest the following season. During the visit, a communal wassail bowl - filled with a warm spiced cider, perry or ale - would be shared amongst revellers.
Historically, wassailing took many different forms, depending on local tradition. Revellers typically visited local orchards and fruit trees, sang songs, made a hullabaloo (often by banging pots and pans) and were rewarded by the orchard’s grateful owner with some form of warm, spiced alcoholic beverage from a communal wassail bowl or cup. Sometimes a topping of apple, known as ‘lamb's wool’, would be added.
The intention was to ward off bad spirits from the orchards whilst also pleasing the spirits of the fruit trees, all in order to ensure a bountiful crop of fruit in the year ahead.
The noisy banishing of spirits seems to bear a close relationship to the rural folk custom of Charivari, in which a wrongdoer would be shamed by a large group of people parading around their house, making loud and discordant music.
As well as encouraging an abundant harvest from apple, pear and other fruiting trees, the tradition of wassailing could also take another form, with groups of revellers going from house to house to drink toasts and wish good health for the year ahead on the dwellers within. Indeed, the word ‘wassail’ is believed to be derived from the Old English ‘was hál’, meaning ‘be hale’ or ‘good health’.
There are many wassailing songs in Britain, but the two best-known songs associated with the tradition today are ‘The Gloucestershire Wassail Song’ (Wassail! Wassail, all over the town, our toast it is white and our ale it is brown), and ‘The Wassailer’s Carol’ (‘Here we come a-Wassailing among the leaves so green’). Both songs are widely recorded today and are regarded as central to the traditional folk music of England, and in 1992 the English band Blur recorded ‘The Gloucestershire Wassail Song’ as ‘The Wassailing Song’.
If you are near Buxted in East Sussex - Oast Farm is worth a visit - they have a farm shop and a fab little cafe. I can recommend the cornish pasties by the way.