Slange Var!

When my wife and I were stranded in Scotland, we were delighted to meet two lovely Scotsmen named Matt and Alan in a pub. With our flights canceled and the extra costs of hotels, parking, and food, we were certainly feeling stressed. We had gone to a pub we enjoyed earlier in the week, and Matt and Alan unexpectedly came over to chat and soon we were all toasting “Slange Var!” This is the traditional Scottish toast, meaning “To your good health.”

Toasts have been around for hundreds of years, but they are most often used nowadays in an ironic or humorous tone. College students at a bar will toast anything and everything. I know I’ve done it. It’s nothing more than a gesture. However, has anyone ever told you that toasts—the clinking of glasses and saying of words—is actually a magical act?

Medieval sages taught that cheers and toasts warded off demons and evil spirits. The louder the cheer, the more the devil was spooked. They also thought that when you clinked glasses and spilled some fluid on the ground, you were giving the spirits an offering in exchange for peace. Some even considered the act of cheers to be a way of showing that the drinks weren’t poisonous and all who drank together were friends. This old magic, while seemingly vanished in our time, still persists. The toast conveys more than just a pleasant sense of unity; tradition tells us that an actual event occurs when we toast. We scatter the demons and spirits that plague us. Toasting with someone is a real gift in our age of skepticism and distrust.

Quickly, Matt found out what our favorite whisky was and bought us a round. After raising glasses and shouting “Slange Var” in unison, the conversation continued. Our talk turned to childhood misadventures and some light political commentary, but what stayed with me was the toast itself.

Much of contemporary culture in America treats the daily doings of normal people as rote actions, but this toast reminded me that our actions carry real significance. Was the kindness of a welcoming stranger a kindness and nothing more? Are small acts of kindness just that, small? The toast ended there, and we walked away. We didn’t know these two guys and will probably never see them again.

Simplifications like these rob us of true power, a magical power, and rejecting them restores our actions to a larger narrative and imbues them with eternal significance. When we gather together, we are banding against the forces of evil that would seek to destroy us with isolation and anxiety. Raising a toast is a rallying cry against such things. How could toasting not be symbolic of something more? Scotland is the land of unicorns, castles, and William Wallace! The very fabric of this magical existence runs through Matt and Allan, and they shared that with us for my wife and I to bring home to Tallahassee, Florida.

For Christians, toasts should take on an even greater meaning. Jesus Christ claims that when “two or more gather together in my Name, there am I.” For more than two millennia, Christians understood the need to fight off spiritual evils. In the early days of Christianity, the Desert Fathers recounted very real stories of battles against devils. St. Anthony is beaten half to death by a horde of demons, and his friends believe him to literally be on the brink of death. However, St. Anthony recovers and confronts the demons, who marvel at his faith, and flee. The whole idea of a toast being a means of scattering the demons that beguile us should speak to the spirit of Christian life on earth and to the spiritual battles we face on a daily basis.

When dear Alan and Matt approached me and my wife, they did so out of a benevolent spirit. No doubt they saw us sitting idly by and came to talk out of their good-hearted, and maybe slightly intoxicated, nature. Still, in this ordinary event, there can be magic at work. We toasted each other’s health, and their goodness rescued us from our anxiety in a way that would not have occurred without them. There was magic at work even if we didn’t know it.

The devil finds us wherever we might be. St. Anthony went to the desert to remove all distractions and focus solely on God, to live a holy life. The devil found him even there. At home there are far more distractions than there are on vacation. Work and family are enough to take up most people’s whole lives. In our homes, we snap at our spouse, our kids; we fail to take care of our land and house; we focus on thoughts that do not matter and only pull us farther away from God. The devil’s greatest trick was convincing us that he didn’t exist.

The beauty of toasts is that they are a natural way to participate in the enchanted reality we inhabit. When we gather with family at home or with friends on the porch, a toast can be like lighting a candle in the dark. It’s the simplest of actions, but also the confirmation of Christ’s presence amongst us. The demons will exist irrespective of human belief, but so will God’s blessings and powers.

When we toast we celebrate our fight against the forces of darkness and evil. Now I relish the toasts we make at family events, but it was not until our toast with Matt and Alan that I began to truly appreciate those toasts. My wife and I are trying to recapture the magical realities around us, and toasts are one of those acts that bear witness to these realities. So raise a glass with us and toast the end of the night.

Image via Flickr