Now is the time to start preparing for the holidays ahead. No, we don’t mean shopping or menu planning, which are good ideas by the way, but preparing for the social events ahead. Ways to fine-tune your social etiquette are to know how to give good toasts, a universal practice of honoring a person or occasion with an expression of goodwill and a drink. The holidays present many opportunities to give toasts with gatherings of friends and family ahead, including parties, winter weddings and graduations.
Toasts occur in specific contexts, typically in conjunction with eating and always with guests or friends. The shared activity of drinking alcohol tends to give the interaction informality and lowers inhibition, while toasting formalizes it and makes it a constructive social event. The toaster stands, lifts a filled glass, gives a toast to the guest of honor and ends with formulaic cheers. Guests signal their approval with the clinking of lifted glasses and a “hear, hear.” The final act of drinking, whether of alcohol or not, seals the ritual and bonds the group.
A basic condition, or felicity condition, in toasting is that the toast should express a wish regarded favorably by everyone at the group. Wedding toast scenes from romantic comedy movies often break this condition to provide comedic relief in a potentially stressful and emotionally high situation. For instance in the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” a best man’s toast offsets the seriousness of the occasion but is kept appropriate with its incorporation of praise and well-wishes to the couple.
The term toast also refers to the verbal expression accompanying the drink. There are short and long toasts, light-hearted and serious ones or explicit and implicit ones. Here are some, courtesy of Real Simple magazine:
10 Holiday Toasts
1. Blessed is the season that engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love. ~Hamilton Wright Mabie
2. May you have warmth in your igloo, oil in your lamp, and peace in your heart. ~Inuit proverb
3. May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions.~Joey Adams
4. May all your joys be true joys, and all your pain Champagne. ~Anonymous
5. Here’s to holly and ivy hanging up, and to something wet in every cup. ~Ogden Nash
6. If you can’t be merry at Christmas, then you can drive the rest of us home when we are! ~Mark Bromberg
7. Here’s to us that are here, to you that are there, and the rest of us everywhere. ~Rudyard Kipling
8. In the New Year, may your right hand always be stretched out in friendship, and never in want. ~Irish toast
9. Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man. ~Benjamin Franklin
10. As you slide down the banisters of life, may the splinters never point the wrong way. ~Anonymous
