Happy New Year! Well, it’s New Year’s Eve, but hard to believe tomorrow we wake up to a brand new year! I don’t know about you, but I’m sure ready for a new beginning!

Since it is New Year’s Eve, I thought it’d be fun to explore where the ‘toast’ came from – you’re curious too, aren’t you? Put simply, a toast is a call to drink in honor of a person or a concept, such as good health. For centuries, people dropped pieces of spiced toast into their wine because the seasonings and charcoal flavored and tempered the wine. The bread-laden wine, accompanied by salutations, is where the toast got its name. A toast became a way to offer glad tidings and good luck to its drinkers as they collectively celebrated health, honor and their host.

In “The Odyssey,” Ulysses drank to Achilles’ health. In ancient Rome, diners raised their glasses to the Emperor Augustus at every meal. Many other cultures, including the Egyptians, Hebrews, Huns, Persians and Saxons, pledged their honor by raising a glass, too. The next time you raise a glass, you’ll not only be making a toast, you’ll be joining a historical movement.

That’s enough history lessons for today! Since I know y’all most likely have last minute things to attend to, or parties to get ready for, I’ll keep this short and sweet and we’ll jump to the funnies, m’kay? Speaking of ‘ancient’, this cracked me up:

Here are a couple of residual Christmas funnies:

This is hysterical:

This is hilarious:

This totally cracked me up:

This is hilarious:

I love this:

This cracked me up:

This is funny:

This cracked me up:

And I’m just going to leave this right here for you:

That’s a wrap for this week – you know the drill, link up and join in the fun, everyone is welcome.

have a Happy and Safe New Year!

Happy New Year!

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Link up your Random (or not) here:

Keeping the random alive (barely) – feel free to snag a badge and play along – one for my wino friends:

<div align="center"><a href="http://stacyuncorked.com" title="Stacy Uncorked" target="_blank"><img src="http://stacysrandomthoughts.com/Files/randomtuesday.jpg" alt="Stacy Uncorked" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

And one for my non-wino friends:

<div align="center"><a href="http://stacyuncorked.com" title="Stacy Uncorked" target="_blank"><img src="http://stacysrandomthoughts.com/Files/randomtuesday2.jpg" alt="Stacy Uncorked" style="border:none;" /></a></div>