“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” The famous words of Ben Franklin, seeming to grant the blessing of one of the greatest of the founding fathers, the author of Poor Richard’s Almanack, the guy who trapped electricity in a bottle, on the humble drink known as beer.
This slogan has become quite famous, appearing on t-shirts, posters, even beer glasses. It is even being featured on merchandise at the living history museum Old Sturbridge Village. I saw the t-shirt when my daughter and I visited there a couple weeks ago.
Just one little, inconvenient problem: Ben Franklin never said it.
Go ahead, check it out. Find the written record of Franklin using those words. Go on, I’ll wait. Give up yet? It doesn’t exist. Franklin never said it.
But, you say, that only proves he never WROTE it. Couldn’t he have said it in passing to someone else, who subsequently passed it one down through history? Plausible, except for one small problem. Franklin was a wine drinker. And he really did use the following words to describe wine: “Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vine, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.”
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| He also never said, "Beer is money," but we'll pretend he did. |
It’s easy to see where and why the mistake occurred. Both are nice sentiments, talking about the mysterious, almost mystical creation of alcohol. But only one of them looks good on a t-shirt. I can forgive that (and I have; a have a copy of the Franklin misquote hanging in my home brewery).
But what about history? History is filled with convenient myths, like George Washington and the cherry tree. They serve a purpose, of course, helping take the diverse episodes of history and mix them together to form a coherent stew, an easily followed narrative to teach our kids. And so what if some of the things we learn aren’t totally true? Does it matter?
I think it does, ultimately, but not enough to make a federal case out of it. It matters that Franklin preferred wine to beer, but not as much as it matters that he acknowledged the importance of alcoholic beverages in life during that colonial period. It matters that George Washington never chopped done a cherry tree and swore to tell the truth about it, but not as much as it matters that George Washington was a great leader, with the wisdom to lead by limiting his own power and inspiring those around him. And if the cherry tree myth helps him inspire more young people even today, more than 200 years after he died, who am I to argue with that?
What matters is that our children learn about history. I loved it when my daughter came home from a President’s Day themed lesson at school with a drawing she colored of George Washington and that damned mythical cherry tree. I loved it, even if it never happened. It matters (at least to me) that my daughter learns the truth about history. But I think it matters even more that we, as parents, are encouraging them to keep learning, and that we know what they are being taught. The myths that we learn when we’re young serve a purpose. They help us understand the more complicated parts of our history, and help us make history relevant to the present. And if we can help our kids with THAT, we’ll be starting them in the right direction.
But what about Old Sturbridge Village? Can I let that venerable living history museum off the hook for featuring that historically inaccurate Franklin quote? Tell you what, OSV, we'll call it even if you teach the kids Washington never chopped down the cherry tree. I hate that one.
