This is a pretty cool article on the history of toasting that was written by Will Anderson a few years back. Pretty cool stuff.

Toasting, to drink to someone's health or happiness, is a custom that goes back as far as drinking itself. In fact, it's one of mankind's oldest social customs. Prehistoric tribes were known to have practiced several variations of toasting. Even the Greeks and Romans solemnized their drinking by offering up good health to their many gods.

It wasn't until seventeenth-century England, though, that the word "toast" came into being. In those days beer was often enjoyed by a fireplace along with bits of toasted bread which was often added to the beer for a little extra flavor. As the addition of the toast was done before drinking and the wishing of health, wealth, or whatever, it stands to reason that the name for the latter took its name from that of the former.

So actually there's not that much reason to the above reasoning at all, but words have come to be in far stranger ways, and it is the more or less accepted derivation of "toast."

Regardless of how it came about, toasting is a wonderful custom. In Austria, it is custom to look each person in the eye and say "prost" as you toast them individually. I like that custom. I sign that you are really connecting with the person and not just raising your glass to the entire room. Somehow a beer has always seemed to taste better when drunk to someone or something. So here are a few of my favorite toasts culled from the thirst-provoking pages of Lewis C. Henry's Toasts for All Occasions (Halcyon House, Garden City, New York).

May the most you wish for be the least you get.

Here's to temperance supper, With water in glasses tall,

And coffee and tea to end with-And me not there at all.

Here's to a long life and a merry one,

A quick death and an easy one,

A pretty girl and a true one,

A cold beer- and another one.

May you live all the days of your life. - Swift