I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.

To read an article excerpted in this Roundup, click on its blue title. Each “blue” article is hyperlinked so you can read the whole article.

Please feel free to share.

Invite at least one other person to subscribe today! https://buttondown.email/AnnettesNewsRoundup

____________________________

A toast to you, dear Readers.

As we raise a glass to the past year and the one ahead, let’s explore the history of the tradition and its name.

A Toast to a Year and a Word.

Toasting is a tradition that dates back to ancient Greece. The act of raising a glass to wish someone good fortune “came around even before the word,” Paul Dickson, the author of a book on toasts, told Times Insider. For example, Ulysses drank to Achilles’ health in Homer’s “Odyssey,” though the word itself was not used in the poem.

The word came to us through the Middle English “tosten” in the 12th century. The noun, meaning bread that had been browned with heat, and the verb, “to brown bread,” may have derived from the Old French toster, “to roast or grill,” or the Latin torrere, “to burn.”

Over the years, toast has enjoyed menu makeovers, with results like French toast or avocado toast. Kim Severson of New York Times Cooking said she thought the best way to enjoy it was sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. (And, she predicts that “shrimp toast” will become popular in 2024.)

But in the Middle Ages, toast was used to flavor a drink. Sam Sifton, an assistant managing editor for The Times and the founding editor of New York Times Cooking, said that the practice of “toasting” someone stemmed from the days when people would put “pieces of spiced toast into your mead or your wine.” Toasting a person, he said, is like “putting their name in your glass,” as if they add spice or sweetness.

In his book “The Language of Food,” the linguist Dan Jurafsky writes that “flavoring wine with toast” fell out of favor in the 17th century. Around that time, it became customary for English diners to toast to someone’s health. The person being toasted, Mr. Jurafsky wrote, was usually a woman who “flavored the party just as the spiced toast and herbs flavored the wine”; she became known as the “toast” of the occasion. And a popular person was the “toast of the town.” (A 1928 Times articleused the phrase to describe a dancer in a film: “She is the toast of the town, the desired of all.”)

The Times has reported on toasts that were sweet, rowdy and potentially treacherous: In 1925, a 3 a.m. brawl “between two Americans over a toast” ended a party hosted by the Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich of Russia. In 1964, The Times wrote about a group of hospital workers who “drank a champagne toast” to a volunteer entering her 68th year of public service. And in December 1999, “peril profiteers” and “worry warts” pushed warnings and advice.” One came from the American Academy of Ophthalmology: “Before you open a bottle of your favorite bubbly to toast the promise of a new millennium,” a news release republished in The Times said, “make sure it’s cold,” because warm bottles can cause “blinding injuries.”

The slang expression “You’re toast,” meaning you’re finished or doomed, comes from the 1984 film “Ghostbusters,” said Grant Barrett, the head lexicographer of Dictionary.com. (Bill Murray ad-libbed the line “This chick is toast.”) “You’re toast” appeared in The Times a decade later. In an On Language column in 1997, William Safire wrote that the phrase “Hey, dude. You’re toast, man” appeared in The St. Petersburg Times in 1987.

According to Mr. Sifton, toasting “is not just simply raising a glass; it’s a formal social interaction.” And on New Year’s Eve, Ms. Severson said, the champagne toast is the “apex of the night.”

So this Sunday, raise a glass or two. Just beware of getting “toasted.” (That’s slang for drunk.)(New York Times)

—

I hope your New Year's Eve toasts, whether with champagne or fruit juice, are joyful, and help you start the year in good spirits.

I will be back tomorrow, in the New Year, to offer you my toast for 2024.

🥂🥂🥂

____________________________