[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6296]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                          NATIONAL PRETZEL DAY

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, though many people do not know it, today has 
been designated by the industry as National Pretzel Day. This is a 
multimillion-dollar industry, and I have a number of large pretzel 
producers in my district, including Auntie Anne's, which you see in the 
shopping malls, Herr's, Anderson, Sturgis, Hammond and others. 
Everybody, it seems, eats pretzels today; but few of us know about the 
history of the pretzel and that they are one of the world's oldest 
snack foods.
  Pretzels go back as far as 610 A.D., when young students in North 
Italian monasteries received them as rewards for correctly reciting 
their prayers.
  A monk designed the pretzel to resemble the way students cross their 
arms across their chest in prayer, and that is also where the pretzel 
gets its name. Pretzel comes from ``pretiola,'' the Latin word for 
``little reward.''
  Pretzels have come a long way in the last 1,400 years and they are 
now a multimillion dollar industry in the U.S., and they are very 
popular. I am very proud to say that many of America's most popular 
pretzels come from Lancaster and Chester Counties in Pennsylvania.

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