Great Moments in Cheese

What makes the holidays so special? Is it the heartwarming Christmas music? The greenery adorning hearth and home, lobby and cubicle? Or is it the brilliant displays of colorful lights illuminating every residential street, public building, and suburban parking lot? Maybe it's the festive green and red clothing everyone wears with their parka and boots and mittens. Or the cards from Aunt Marion, Cousin Joan, and the friendly neighborhood car insurance agent.

While all those things, as well as the incessant blare of popular seasonal songs from every radio station and muzak source, add something really special to the whole holiday vibe, it's something else that truly sets this season apart all all others, making it extra extra special.

It's the Holiday Cheeseball that best embodies the spirit of the season.

In fact, I feel better just saying the words holiday cheeseball. In honor of that sacred trust (I mean really, if you can't depend on your annual cheeseball, what can you depend on?) it is only fitting and proper to observe some Great Moments in the History of Cheese.

The origin of cheese appears to be lost in the mists of time. There are, however, records of the Sumerians making and consuming cheese that date to about 3500 B.C. Homer's 9th century B.C. epic, the Odyssey, describes a scene with the Cyclops Polyphemus making cheese and pressing it into wicker baskets. (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1951/how-did-cheese-originate)

Thistle flowers and green fig juice were used by Romans as rennet. In many abbeys, the monks, who were clergymen as well as writers and graziers and cookers ... and jolly fellows, perfected the munster (munster comes from "monasterium", i.e. "monsastery") Saint Paulin and Maroilles ripening technique, which soon spread throughout European countries.

1952 - President Charles de Gaulle declares, "The French will only be united under the threat of danger. Nobody can simply bring together a country that has 265 kinds of cheese."

Now repeat after me: HOLIDAY CHEESEBALL... Don't you feel kinda festive?