National Absinthe Day

National Absinthe Day, observed March 5th, celebrates the high-proof, anise-flavored spirit historically distilled with botanicals including wormwood, fennel, and anise, giving it a distinctive licorice-like flavor and a naturally greenish color that earned it the nickname "the Green Fairy." Absinthe originated in Switzerland in the late 18th century and became especially popular in France during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, closely associated with the Belle Époque-era Parisian bohemian and artistic community, including painters and writers like Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, and Oscar Wilde, whose reputations helped cement absinthe's mystique. The drink developed a notorious reputation in the early 20th century, partly fueled by moral panic and unsubstantiated claims that its wormwood-derived compound, thujone, caused hallucinations or madness, leading to absinthe bans across much of Europe and the United States between roughly 1912 and the 1990s. Modern scientific analysis has found that historical absinthe's thujone levels were not high enough to cause the psychoactive effects once blamed on it, and the drink's alarming reputation is now understood to have owed more to its high alcohol content and the era's broader anti-alcohol sentiment. Absinthe bans were gradually lifted starting in the 1990s and 2000s, and it is now legally produced and sold in most countries, including the United States since 2007. On National Absinthe Day, people celebrate by trying the traditional louche preparation, in which cold water is slowly dripped over a sugar cube into the spirit.