Champagne, kisses and hangovers

Being thrust into a new year is stressful and a little “toast” gives you the courage to admit mistakes of the past and the strength to face the future. You can’t toast the future with just any old drink, certainly not a beer, it’s too ordinary. Margaritas are too salty. Wine is too bland. It should be something bubbly and sparkly and expensive — like champagne.

Dom Perignon, a 17th century monk, created the “champenoise” method of winemaking. His wine would sparkle and bubble and was very expensive. George Washington served champagne to his friends. Richard Lee, the president of Congress, noted that after a few glasses of champagne, the General got “quite merry.”

Making New Year’s resolutions is a popular practice. More than 4,000 years ago, the Babylonians would make promises to the gods to pay debts and return anything they had borrowed. The Babylonians kept their resolutions because nobody wants to break a promise to a god.

Another New Year’s tradition is to kiss your loved one at the stroke of midnight. It is believed that the kiss will guarantee a full year of love and romance. If you don’t have a loved one to kiss, it’s okay to kiss a stranger because that will also guarantee that you will find love in the coming year, possibly with the stranger you just kissed.

In ancient China, they would scare evil spirits away with fireworks. Today, we bang on pots and pans, blast car horns, and shoot off fireworks to scare away any evil spirits that may be lurking around.

Once you’ve scared away the evil spirits, you may feel the need for some good luck. In Spain, it is recommended that you eat 12 green grapes before the clock tolls 12 times. Anyone who can gobble 12 grapes before the clock stops tolling will be blessed with good luck during the coming year — or you could just drink another glass of champagne because I am sure each glass should contain at least 12 grapes.

After a stressful night of making resolutions, kissing friends and strangers, scaring off evil spirits with noisy fireworks (that causes my dog to cower under the bed with the evil spirits), and drinking 12 glasses of champagne — oh my, that’s wrong, you are supposed to eat 12 grapes for good luck, not drink 12 glasses – well, chances are you will wake up on January 1st with a terrible hangover.

Pliny the Elder cured his hangover with owl’s eggs and fried canary. However, this could be dangerous. Grandmothers have been known to cure hangovers by cutting off the head of anyone who fried their canary. The 1878 Paris World Exposition touted the perfect cure for a hangover was a raw egg yolk mixed with Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco sauce. The “hair of the dog,” is an old remedy that involves drinking more alcohol, but the hangover returns once you stop drinking, so you start drinking again. This method is not recommended.

To cure a hangover, the Mayo Clinic recommends that you drink water to prevent dehydration. Eat some toast or crackers to boost your blood sugar and settle your stomach. Bouillon soup can replace lost salt and potassium. Take an over-the-counter pain reliever for a headache, but keep in mind that aspirin can irritate your stomach and acetaminophen can cause liver damage.

The best hangover remedy is to pet your frightened dog and tough it out. The pain and suffering will remind you that 12 glasses of champagne can lead to 12 hours of misery.