If you’re looking for an excuse to enjoy some spring weather with a cold drink in hand, here it is: today is National Beer Day!
What’s more, you can celebrate American freedom while you’re at it.
The little-known holiday, celebrated every April 7, sounds like one of those made-up holidays–celebrated with a Twitter hashtag, but nowhere other than the internet. But National Beer Day, in fact, has a long history–one that comes right out of the federal government’s one-time ban on alcohol.
Today marks the 83rd annual National Beer Day, with the first being held on April 7, 1933.
Back then, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had just begun taking steps to roll back Prohibition, signing the Cullen-Harrison Act in late March 1933. The Cullen-Harrison Act allowed lower-alcohol beverages to be consumed, which included beer with 3.2% alcohol or less, and was one of the key first steps to repealing the 19th Amendment altogether.
The Cullen-Harrison Act went into effect on–you guessed it–April 7.
And, essentially, America responded by collectively celebrating their 21st birthdays, as thousands of Americans nationwide quickly lined up in front of breweries and taverns. For many, it was their first sip of beer–legal beer, at the very least–in more than a dozen years.
Though a comparable case could be made with the costly, yet incredibly ineffective, War on Drugs, the Feds gave up their crusade to ban alcohol. The 19th Amendment was repealed–and nowadays, the federal government is no longer trying to take your beer away.
So today, April 7, do your patriotic duty as an American: celebrate our hard-earned freedom from unwarranted government regulation–by kicking back with a cold one.
