Here we are, dear reader…Christmas Eve 2025.  All is quiet on the West Coast…almost boringly so.  I was bitching about being bored at a bar today when I was reminded of the Eggnog Riot of 1826 and I thought, “Hot damn!  That’s right.  This is something my dear reader needs to be reminded of.”  So let’s get to it.

It was Christmas Eve, 1826, and the United States Military Academy at West Point was sitting on a powder keg of repressed adolescent testosterone and enforced sobriety.  The administration, in a fit of puritanical buzz-killing pique, had declared the campus dry.  No booze.  Nary a drop.  Which, if you know anything about military history or just human nature in general, is sort of like trying to stop a tidal wave with a sternly worded memo and a napkin.  You are essentially begging the universe for catastrophe.

Which, of course, is precisely what they got.

The cadets – one of whom was a young Jefferson Davis, who would later go on to make some arguably poor career choices involving secession, decided that a Christmas without spirit(s) was unconstitutional.  Or at least un-American.  So, they did what any self-respecting group of future leaders would do: they pooled their resources, bribed a sympathetic enlisted man (bless his mercenary heart), and smuggled in gallons of whiskey.  Gallons.  Enough rotgut to pickle a horse.

This illicit nectar was destined for the holiday eggnog.  Of course, eggnog is a polarizing beverage at the best of times – a sludge of dairy and regret that sits in your stomach like a concrete block – but when spiked with contraband whiskey by a bunch of sexually frustrated cadets in wool uniforms, it becomes a revolutionary accelerant.

The evening started quietly enough, presumably with some light caroling and the surreptitious passing of cups.  But as the ethanol hit the bloodstream, the shit hit the fan, and the decorum disintegrated faster than a cheap tent in a hurricane.  By the witching hour, North Barracks had transformed into a scene from a Bosch painting, if Bosch had been really into muskets and drunken singing.

The logistical grandeur of the chaos is staggering to contemplate.  This was about 70 cadets – roughly a third of the student body – getting absolutely, catastrophically shithoused.  Far beyond tipsy, they were operating on a plane of existence where gravity was a suggestion and authority was a hilarious abstract concept.  Around here, we refer to people in this state as Alconauts.

When the officers (the poor, beleaguered “tactical officers” whose job it was to maintain order) tried to intervene, things went sideways.  Captain Hitchcock, a man who probably just wanted to go to bed, burst into a room to find a party raging.  He tried to read the Riot Act.  In response, a cadet tried to shoot him.

Let me repeat that for the folks in the back: a cadet tried to shoot a superior officer over eggnog.  The pistol misfired, or Hitchcock would have been the first casualty of the War on Christmas.

The riot spread.  Windows were smashed – glazing being apparently being the enemy of liberty.  Banisters were torn from staircases.  Furniture becomes airborne.  Muskets – actual functioning muskets – are waved around with the kind of reckless theatricality that suggests both a deep commitment to chaos and a total misunderstanding of firearms safety.  Additional officers attempting to restore order are greeted not with obedience but with slurred threats, drunken philosophy, and the kind of belligerent holiday cheer that makes you wonder whether the entire institution was built on a cursed ley line.

Swords were drawn.  One cadet reportedly tried to duel a superior officer.  Another attempted to lead a breakaway faction of equally hammered comrades in what can only be described as a proto-revolutionary splinter movement.  It was Animal House with bayonets.  At one point, Jefferson Davis, thoroughly pickled, stumbled into a room to warn his comrades that the officers were coming, only to realize the officers were already there.  He shouted, “Put away the grog, boys!” which is 19th-century slang for “Hide the evidence, we are so fucked.”

The “Eggnog Riot,” as it was later dubbed by historians with a flair for the absurd, raged until Christmas morning.  When the sun rose over the Hudson, the barracks looked like they had been shelled.  The hangover was no doubt biblical.  The commandant was apoplectic.  The court-martial that followed was one of the largest in U.S. military history.  Nineteen cadets were expelled, though many, including Davis – managed to wiggle out of serious punishment because they hadn’t actually broken anything important or successfully murdered anyone.  Nonetheless, careers teetered.  And the academy’s reputation is dragged through the snow like a corpse.

And yet, American survives.  Hell, America thrives.  Some of the riot’s participants go on to be  respected officers, engineers, and public servants.  The republic doesn’t crumble because a bunch of 19-year-olds got black-out drunk on weaponized eggnog and tried to overthrow their dorm monitors.

It’s a beautiful, stupid reminder that even the most disciplined institutions are only ever one bad decision and two gallons of whiskey away from total anarchy.  And I kind of respect the commitment.  If you’re going to ruin your military career, you might as well do it while defending your right to get wasted spiced milk punch.

So raise a glass – preferably one not spiked with enough whiskey to trigger a congressional inquiry – and toast the cadets of 1826, who gave us the greatest holiday riot on U.S. military history.

And if I don’t see you tomorrow, have a very merry Christmas.

N.P.: “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” – Gary Hoey