St. Swizzle

As we approach the end of the year we need to pause and remember the true meaning of St. Swizzle’s feast day.  Many of you don’t know this story, a hole in your education that can be plugged quite easily.

It was in the early days of Christianity, a time when Christianity was still novel enough to be trending among the kings of what would someday be Europe. 

As kings would have it, a disagreement between the nations we now know as England, Spain, and France broke out over the correct way, that is to say, their way of mixing drinks.  This controversy lock stepped Europe to the edge of war.  The Pope, in an effort to calm the waters, issued a decree that the rulers of these three kingdoms would come together at a small monastery in the Swiss Alps to resolve their difference or face ex-communication. 

It comes to the last day of the year, and the three remain deadlocked and jointly announce that having met the Pope's decree, on the morrow, they would return to their kingdoms unable to find a solution.  Everyone knew this would be followed by royal heralds declaring war, plunging Europe into years of death, destruction, and despair. 

Abbot Swizzle, hearing the news, was beside himself.  Why fight over peasants, he thought?  One bunch of peasants was just as stinky as another and just as useless.  When informed by the monks it was over the proper way to mix drinks, he was outraged.

Barging into the Kings' last late-night dinner, he demanded to know the cause of this conflict.  After all, in times of war, monasteries became shelters and morgues to the displaced, wounded and dead, mostly the dead. 

The three Kings explained that each had decided, after much prayer and meditation, that there was only one proper way to mix drinks to proclaim glory to God and shun the Devil.  With a sneer, each told Swizzle that any other way, pausing only to glance at the other two, would be to open the door to evil and sever the noble link kings had with God.  That link severed meant the king could no longer be worthy of ruling.  Such lands needed to be protected by a God-fearing king, hence the necessity of war.

Each king demonstrated his method of mixing drinks, much to the universal disgust of the other two.  It is then that blessed Swizzle took a cup and with his badge of office, a long gold crucifix, plunged the long end into the vessel and mixed the contents.

The kings were amazed.  They declared “Pax de Swizzle” and returned to their kingdoms to find a different cause to go to war over.

This is why on the last day of the year, at the very end of the day, we place a Swizzle stick in our glass and proclaim a year of goodwill. 

All thanks to St. Swizzle!

Holy Relics   Thanks to Punchdrink.com