Toasts for the New Year: badinage and banter, the good, the bad, the sly and the silly. Some serious and smart, some feather brained and muddle headed. Find your favorite.

Toasts for 2005

There are places for long sincere toasts. My table is not one of them. We do not live in a time when verbal expression, much less refined humor and wit, are overly valued. The clinking of glasses and the brief toasts generally offered tend to be unthinking and mechanical. Instead of the practiced, ingrained toast to happiness or health, why not say something that is at least original (even if not originated by you) and meaningful?

A toast, as I see it, is an opportunity to offer a sparkling and polished gem of a thought along with the food and wine. Don’t be long winded. The length should be no more than your friends will tolerate without wishing they could tilt back their glasses. Be prepared. Have a few toasts ready for the occasions when you need them. Use reminder notes if it helps. This is no time to think on your feet unless you have a mind like Groucho Marx. It is also no time for sincerity to edge into sentiment and bathos. Leave your friends with a smile, not a groan.

Here are some of my favorite toasts, organized by subject.

For silly humor:

To the Czar. When the people were penniless, the Czar was Nicholas.

For lovers, sincere and not so sincere:

I have known many,
Liked a few,
Loved one—
Here’s to you!

If you love me, as I love you,
We’ll both be friendly and untrue.

Don’t make love by the garden gate.
Love is blind,
But the neighbors ain’t.

Say it with flowers, say it with eats,
Say it with kisses, say it with sweets,
Say it with jewelry, say it with drink,
But always be careful not to say it with ink.

Birds do it and fly.
Bees do it and die.
Dogs do it and stick to it,
So here’s to it. Let’s do it!

On drinking and having fun:

Here’s to a high old frolic,
Chiefly alcoholic.

What would you drink to?
About three in the morning.

To temperance, in moderation.

God made man, frail as a bubble,
God made love, God made trouble,
God made the vine, was it a sin,
That man made wine to drown trouble in?

Almost every language has a toast to health or to life, the French “Sante” the Hebrew
“L’chayim,” and the Spanish “Salud” among the best known, at least in New York. But
since many of the best toasts have a touch of the subversive, both the avoidance and
acceptance of death are the subject of toasts in many cultures.

Though life is now pleasant and sweet to the sense,
We’ll be damnably moldy a hundred years hence.

Here’s to hell.
May my stay there be as much fun as my way there.

Dorothy Parker wrote this witty short poem that works well as a toast:

Razors pain you, rivers are damp,
Acids stain you, and drugs cause cramp,
Guns aren’t lawful, nooses give,
Gas smells awful, you might as well live.

And from Tennyson, what I consider the irreplaceable, classic toast of the New Year:

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring happy bells across the snow;
The year is going, let him go.

Not to compete with Tennyson, but I offer a New Year’s toast to my readers:

To the East Hampton Star, it shines for all,
May your name appear in weddings and sports
In letters and parties and other happy reports,
May you be named in everything merry,
But be unquestionably unfit for the obituary.
Here’s to being alive in 2005!