Happy National Soup Month

Celebrated: In the United States, origins obscure

A broad consensus agrees that January is National Soup Month, but I can't find any information about who declared it so, or when. But of course January is National Soup Month; soup is what you want to eat in cold weather. A food website I won't embarrass notes that soup dates to prehistoric times, and again I say of course: soup was probably the first recipe of any kind.

What is there to say about soup? "Only the pure in heart can make a good soup," wrote Ludwig von Beethoven, and the Irish poet Brendan Behan once said that if it were raining soup, the Irish would go outside with forks. But any literary discussion of soup begins and ends with the late, beloved master Maurice Sendak.

In January it's so nice
While slipping on the sliding ice
To sip hot chicken soup with rice
Sipping once, sipping twice
Sipping chicken soup with rice

That link goes to a video of the Carole King song, which I almost embedded. But then I remembered my all-time favorite TV commercial of any kind, ever, which YouTube unfairly labels as "Creepy Alien Commercial." It just happens to be for Campbell's Soup, and I am delighted to have an excuse to post it here.