Many young people in current American culture enjoy using new technology, such as fancy phones or social networking sites.  I do enjoy some of this technology to a slight extent, but I personally have more reverence for another product that has been around for thousands of years: beer.  This product is arguably a large part of American popular culture today even though it has been in existence for some time.  Beer’s impact is evident in everything from sports, music, movies, and even clothing.  Beer also influences me in a number of personal and social ways, and I therefore feel that it is part of my cultural identity.

As mentioned above beer has been around for many years.  My relationship with beer, however, legally started almost a year ago.  Beer was there on my 21^st birthday; there was a lot of it, and it was good.  Although my 21^st birthday was the first time I was legally allowed to drink beer, I grew up around beer and had knowledge of beer from an early age.  My parents drank beer occasionally, and I was taught at a young age to respect and enjoy it and not to abuse it.  The 21^st birthday in America has become a right of passage because it marks the legal drinking age.  It makes sense then that this event is often accompanied by beer.

Beer is now a prevalent part of my life.  When I go to a party, I drink beer.  When I go to the bar, I drink beer.  When I go out to dinner, I drink beer.  When I spend time with my family on the holidays, we drink beer.  Beer is a social beverage that allows people to bond with one another, which is part of the reason I enjoy it so much.  I feel that it is a social beverage because it is easy to carry, it does not require a fancy glass (unlike martinis or other mixed drinks), and it is inexpensive.   All of these qualities are conducive to social situations.  The act of drinking beer alone is a social statement.  If a person is drinking a beer, one would assume that this person is casual, down-to-earth, and relatable.  The consumption of different beverages has other social connotations.  For example, if a person is drinking wine at a bar I would personally assume that this person believes herself to be of a higher social class.  For me, beer has become the beverage of middle-class Americans.

The prevalence of beer in American sports supports the idea that beer is a cultural symbol.  NASCAR is one of the most popular sports in the United States today, and is simultaneously disliked by many Americans.  Whether people love it or hate it, NASCAR itself has its own culture, and beer is part of that culture.  NASCAR is currently sponsored by Coors Brewing Company, which recently replaced the Anheuser Busch Brewing Company.  Coors paid NASCAR millions of dollars to have their beverage be the official beer of NASCAR.  Logically, a company would not spend that amount of money if they felt that fans would not buy their product.  I have been to a number of NASCAR races, and beer is absolutely a part of the event.  For me, half of the fun of going to a race is cooking out and drinking beer in the tailgate of a truck before the race with all of my friends.  This act of cooking out in a truck tailgate is known as “tailgating,” and is popular in other sports.

Football is another sport in which beer is popular.  The National Football League, like NASCAR, is sponsored by Coors Brewing Company.  I have noticed that a wide demographic of the American public enjoys football.  Unlike NASCAR, almost every region of the United States has a NFL team from their area.  One can then conclude that there is a very wide variety of people who are NFL fans, and it is safe to assume that a large amount of these people drink beer while watching their respective teams play.  The prevalence of beer in a country-wide sport supports the idea that beer is a beverage for many different kinds of people.  I am a fan of professional football, and my friends and I always drink beer while watching football games.  Although I have never been to a NFL game myself, I know that tailgating and the consumption of beer occurs because I have friends who have gone.  If I ever go to a professional football game, I can almost guarantee that I will tailgate and drink beer.

Beer has become so popular in sports that the act of drinking beer has become a sport itself.  Beer pong, a beer-drinking game, is a product of popular culture among American college students.  Although I am not certain of the origin of the game, I know that today it is played quite often by students at a number of universities, including Christopher Newport University.  I also know that this game is popular among college students nation wide because I have a number of friends from different regions of the United States and they all have played beer pong.  The game gets its name because of what a person needs in order to play the game: beer and a ping-pong ball.  Cups of beer, usually red Solo-brand cups, are set up in a flat pyramid pattern on either side of the table.  Teams are set up into groups of two, and the object of the game is to get the other team to drink all of their beer.  A person has to drink when the other team lands the ping-pong ball into one of their cups.  There are a variety of other rules and other ways to play, but the basic concept is the same no matter where the game is played.  This game is so popular at parties that people have to sign up in advance to play, and the list often covers more than one sheet of paper.

One movie that exemplifies the popularity of beer drinking games is the 2006 movie Beerfest.  This is personally one of my favorite movies because I find the plot comical and entertaining.  The movie is about two brothers of German heritage and their friends who discover an underground beer-drinking competition while on a trip to Germany.  At this beer-drinking competition, which is known as “Beerfest,” teams from every country in the world partake in beer-drinking challenges in order to win the beer drinking champion title.  When the American group stumbles upon Beerfest, they also discover that they are cousins of the reigning beer-drinking champions, the German team.  The American brothers later discover that their late grandfather created the recipe for the best beer in the world, which the German cousins are envious of.  With this recipe and a lot of beer drinking, the Americans are able to come back to Beerfest a year later and beat their German cousins.  This movie is evidence that beer is a part of American popular culture because of the movie’s popularity in the United States.  It also exemplifies how beer drinking can unite people, and it illustrates the concept of beer as a social beverage.

My life would be very different if I did not drink beer.  Social events which I attend would be very different, and a number of the sports that I enjoy watching would be quite different as well.  I could never imagine watching the football game with my friends and family on Super Bowl Sunday drinking a cold glass of water; the experience would simply not be as much fun.  The effects of drinking beer itself are not what I would miss.  Instead, I would miss the cultural connotation of drinking beer.  I have come to recognize beer as a cultural symbol of relaxation and recreation of the average American, and I feel that America as a whole would be lacking something without it.