It was on December 5th, 1933, 73 years ago today when the 21st Amendment was ratified and Prohibition was abolished in the United States.

Here’s an interesting notion: the Belmont Station blog points to this blog post which advocates making December 5th a holiday celebrating the repeal of Prohibition, called (appropriately enough) Repeal Day.

I can get behind that. It would simply be a St. Patrick’s Day or Cinco de Mayo-type of holiday, only celebrating U.S. history.

And while Prohibition applied to all forms of alcohol, the effect it had on the American beer industry was especially pronounced; the only breweries that were able to survive were the megabreweries and that was only by diversifying into other fields. This essentially set back the beer industry until the 1970s, when the homebrew and craft beer movements were revived.

So crack open and enjoy a microbrew or homebrew for Repeal Day!