DOTD For Friday, December 5, 2025

A Drink To Celebrate The End Of Prohibition!

Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is a Bee’s Knees Cocktail/Mocktail, inspired by Repeal Day in the U.S.!

Repeal Day commemorates the end of Prohibition in the United States, when the 21st Amendment was ratified in 1933, ending the nationwide ban on alcohol. The 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment in one fell swoop, relegating Prohibition to the dustbin of history. The Volstead Act, which established federal enforcement of Prohibition, became moot, while Eliot Ness got sent off to be an alcohol tax agent in the “Moonshine Mountains” of southern Ohio, after sending Al Capone to prison.

The event was so momentous that then-President FDR responded to the ratification by saying to the nation, “What America needs now is a drink.” No wonder he was elected president four times and was one of the best-lubricated presidents the U.S. has ever had. Let’s face it - FDR probably needed a drink as much as anyone while trying to clean up the disastrous economy Republicans handed him, & get the New Deal off the ground.

Today it’s natural to name the Bee’s Knees Cocktail /Mocktail as the DOTD. Nobody seems to know its inventor, but it is accepted as a Prohibition-era cocktail, masks the taste of the worst swill, and has a cool name.

The phrase “bees knees” itself dates to well before Prohibition and was used to refer to something that didn’t exist. It was used as a spoof term, like sending someone to the hardware store to buy plaid paint, a left-handed hammer, or get 50 feet of gig line. Usage of the term evolved, and by the 1920s it became one of many terms, like “the ant’s pants” or “the cat’s pajamas”, used to describe something as the best.

For today, we think the Bee’s Knees Cocktail is the best - which is why we’ve made it the Drink Of The Day, today. Plus, if you’d still rather abstain from alcohol, you can make it as cocktail or as a mocktail.

Ingredients

Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink: