Celebrate Repeal Day®

At the turn of the twentieth century, a powerful temperance movement convinced Congress that alcohol was the root cause of most of America's problems — crime, poverty, broken families, you name it. On January 16th, 1919, Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment and banned it outright. The thinking went that without booze, Americans would be healthier, more productive, and morally improved. It did not go as planned.

Americans march in protest during Prohibition — a movement that ultimately proved impossible to sustain.

Prohibition made things considerably worse. Organized crime stepped in to fill the void left by legitimate bars and distilleries. Bootleg liquor flooded the country. Speakeasies outnumbered the saloons they replaced. Respect for the law eroded. The federal government had effectively handed a thriving industry to gangsters, and everyone knew it.

By the late 1920s, even many of Prohibition's original supporters had turned. Repeal organizations multiplied. In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for President on a platform that included ending Prohibition — and won in a landslide.

The Salt Lake Tribune, December 6, 1933 — the morning after Utah cast the deciding vote.

On December 5th, 1933, Utah became the final state needed to ratify the 21st Amendment, and just like that, Prohibition was over. America got its bars back. By 1966, not a single state had laws banning alcohol. December 5th was a very good day.

My name is Jeffrey Morgenthaler. I'm a bartender living in Portland, Oregon. It was December 5th, 2003, and I was working a quiet night at a bar in my old hometown of Eugene when one of our regulars glanced up from his newspaper and mentioned, almost offhandedly, that it was the 70th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition. Something clicked. "I'm a bartender," I thought. "This feels like a holiday specifically tailored to me, my peers, and anyone who can legally enjoy a drink. Why aren't we celebrating this as a country?"

The following year I gathered a group of fellow bartenders, and we spent December 5th hopping from bar to bar, spreading the word around town. The year after that we did it again, with more revelers, and more bars. A tradition was taking shape.

Then in 2006, I finally wrote about it on my website — and the response was immediate. Repeal Day® had arrived.

Those thirteen years took a real toll — not just in crime and corruption, but in something harder to quantify. The craft of fermentation and distillation went underground. The American bartender, who had been a respected figure in civic life, became a criminal. Traditions that had been passed down for generations were interrupted or lost entirely.

We celebrate Repeal Day® because December 5th marks the restoration of all of that. The craft. The culture. The bartender's place as a contributor to the culinary arts. And the simple, constitutional right to have a drink with friends.

The simplest way to mark the occasion is also the most fitting: make a proper Old Fashioned at home. It's the cocktail that survived Prohibition in spirit if not in practice — a straightforward mix of whiskey, bitters, sugar, and ice that rewards good technique and good tools. Here's everything you need.