Take a Cup of Kindness BY JIM MATHIS
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here are two things that must happen before I get in the Christmas Spirit each year and they both involve movies. First, on a cold winter’s evening, my beloved will ask “Want to watch a Christmas movie?” which I know means it’s time for the original Die Hard. It’s just not Christmas until you’ve watched Hans Gruber plummet from the Nakatomi tower. I know some of you are thinking Die Hard is not a Christmas movie, but you are wrong. Sorry. This precedent has been well established. The other trigger is that moment in It’s a Wonderful Life when George Bailey’s family and friends gather in that old drafty house and sing “Auld Lang Syne.” By the time Harry Bailey raises a cup of kindness and says “A toast to my big brother George: the richest man in town” I’m bawling like a baby. It happens every year; I don’t try to fight it. As I look forward to doing it all over again this year, I got to
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MAN IN THE KITCHEN
thinking about that song, “Auld Lang Syne”. What the heck does that mean anyway? The title literally translates to “old long since” but loosely means something like “days gone by.” Think of it as the Scottish equivalent of “once upon a time” from the fairy tales of youth. But it’s the line in the chorus “we’ll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne” that always strikes me. That line comes from an old Scottish saying that means to share a friendly dram – and since it’s the Scots, we assume they’re talking a good single malt whisky! Maybe that’s why the scene in the movie always brings a tear to my eye. At any rate, that gets me thinking about whiskey (or whisky, more on that distinction later). The history of whiskey goes back way before Jack Daniels. Way, way back to an Egyptian alchemist named Maria Hebraea (sometimes referred to as Mary the Jewess or Mary the Prophetess.) Back in the second century, she is credited with creating the
