Who knows the origin of the pretzel?

Did you know it has a religous conotation?

Don't bark, Barney, don't bark!

... maybe God really was 'speaking to Bush' when he caused him to choke on one. As they say, the Lord works in mysterious ways.

Everyone has a pedigree – even the pretzel, the world's oldest snack food. In fact, you can follow the twists and turns as early as 610AD at a monastery in Southern France or Northern Italy where monks used scraps of dough and formed them into strips to represent a child's arms folded in prayer. The three holes represented the Christian Trinity.

The monks soft-baked and offered the warm, doughy bribe to children who had memorized their Bible verses and prayers. The monks called it a Pretiola, Latin for little reward. From there, the Pretzel transformed into the Italian word, Brachiola, which means little arms.

The Pretiola journeyed beyond the French and Italian wine regions, hiked the Alps, wandered through Austria, and crossed into Germany, where it became known as the Bretzel or Pretzel.

In 1440 a page in the prayer book used by Catharine of Cleves depicted St. Bartholomew surrounded by pretzels. They were thought to bring good luck, prosperity and spiritual wholeness. A decade later in 1450, Germans ate pretzels and hard-boiled eggs for dinner on Good Friday – the day of fasting. The large, puffy pretzel symbolized everlasting life, and the two hard-boiled eggs, nestled in each of the large round curves of the pretzel, represented Easter's rebirth.

http://www.sturgispretzel.com/PrezHist.htm

The result was popular.

Until 2003, of course...

from wikipedia-
U.S. President George W. Bush famously choked on a pretzel in January 2002 while watching an NFL football game, briefly fainting and losing consciousness.

Just think how different the world would be if that pretzel had had it's way with Bush.

:shrug: Them monks!

Trying to win votes by being everything to everyone.