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Leap Day Cocktails Lost to Time

Drinks passé, along with Sadie Hawkins-style man-chasing

By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff

Posted Feb 29, 2008 11:27 AM CST
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(Newser) – Feb. 29 still comes once every four years, but celebratory cocktails marking the bissextile have gone out of fashion—along with a leap-year tradition that requires plenty of liquid courage, Eric Felten notes in the Wall Street Journal. Women who proposed marriage during the leap year could not be denied; little wonder desperate lasses were expected to sport scarlet petticoats.

The women's liberation movement eventually helped squash the Sadie Hawkins tradition, and the fortifying beverages of times past—whiskey over green ice cubes, a variety of gin concoctions—haven’t been in vogue since the 1970s. That might not be a terrible loss, given the recipe Felten gives for the Leap Year Dreamsicle: vodka, orange juice, and vanilla ice cream.

If these ice cubes were green you'd have yourself a bissextile cocktail.
If these ice cubes were green you'd have yourself a bissextile cocktail.   (Shutter Stock)
Leap Day cocktails have gone out of style.
Leap Day cocktails have gone out of style.   ((c) padsbrother)
Crazy Leap Year drinking isn't in vogue these days.
Crazy Leap Year drinking isn't in vogue these days.   ((c) A_of_DooM)
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The PG version: Sassafras tea and Sadie Hawkins Day
Charleston Gazette

More on the leap year from Wikipedia
Wikipedia

 
London • New York City • New Orleans • Washington DC • marriage • James Joyce • Dublin • cocktails • leap year • St. Patrick • Sadie Hawkins Day

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