Every year, the average American adult drinks the equivalent of 38 six-packs of beer, a dozen bottles of wine and two quarts of distilled spirits like gin, rum, single malt Scotch, or vodka that aspires to single malt status through the addition of flavors normally associated with yogurt or bubble bath.

We are by no means the most bibulous people: according to the World Health Organization, 39 other nations outdrink us, a list topped by Luxembourg, where residents manage to ingest roughly 284 bottles of beer and 88 bottles of wine annually, no doubt to salve the indignation of explaining that their country isn’t part of Belgium.

Yet even though we Americans drink less than some others, we can hold our own, especially now that the peak ethanol season is under way. Liquor sales in December, according to hospitality trade groups, are usually a good 50 percent higher than in other months, and that’s hardly a surprise. December is a time of multicreedal spirituality and festivities, and alcohol has been a fixture of celebration and religious ritual since humans first learned to play and pray. December is also cold, dark and miserable, a meteorological migraine begging for home remediation, and alcohol is perhaps humanity’s oldest medicine.

Moreover, December is a time for family, and a taste for alcohol, it seems, is all in the family, the extended phylogenetic family of primates and other animals that make fruit a centerpiece of their diet. Nothing broadcasts the presence of ripe, digestible fruit as effectively as the aroma of fermentation. We’re frugivores at our core.