At every celebration, people clink their glasses together before drinking. It's considered rude not to participate—but the tradition started as a medieval poison detection method based on complete paranoia.
In medieval Europe, poisoning was the assassination method of choice among nobles. It was quiet, hard to trace, and could be done by anyone with access to someone's drink. Nobles lived in constant fear that their wine was spiked.
So they developed a ritual: before drinking, everyone would forcefully clink their glasses together hard enough that liquid would slosh from one cup into the others. If your drink was poisoned, now everyone's drink was poisoned. It became a show of trust.
The logic was that nobody would poison their own drink just to kill you. By mixing everyone's beverages together through aggressive clinking, you ensured that if anyone died, everyone died. It was mutually assured destruction in beverage form.
The practice became so widespread that refusing to clink glasses was essentially announcing "I might have poisoned someone here." It became mandatory etiquette—not participating meant you couldn't be trusted.
Some historians also believe the sound of clinking glasses was thought to ward off evil spirits. Medieval people believed demons could enter your body through any opening, including your mouth while drinking. The loud noise was supposed to scare them away.
There's also a sensory explanation: drinking only engages taste, smell, and sight—but not hearing. Adding the clink incorporated all five senses into the experience, making toasts feel more complete and ceremonial.
Over time, the poison paranoia faded, but the tradition stuck. By the 17th century, clinking glasses had become standard etiquette at any formal gathering. People forgot why they were doing it and just accepted it as "the proper way to toast."
Today, we still follow medieval poison-detection protocols at every wedding, New Year's Eve party, and celebration—we've just forgotten we're reenacting paranoid nobility trying not to get assassinated.
The most ironic part? The poison detection method never actually worked. Sloshing tiny amounts of liquid between glasses wouldn't have been enough to poison everyone or save anyone. Medieval nobles were participating in security theater that became a permanent tradition.