A brief history of picnicking

**First, a definition from:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picnic

A **picnic** is a meal taken outdoors (*al fresco*) as part of an excursion, especially in scenic surroundings, such as a park, lakeside, or other place affording an interesting view, or else in conjunction with a public event such as preceding an open-air theater performance, and usually in summer or spring.

**An article**: https://www.historytoday.com/archive/historians-cookbook/history-picnic

" picnics were taken up by the emergent middle classes and moved outdoors. What caused this change is somewhat unclear; but the most likely explanation is that the socially aspirational simply applied a fashionable French word to a pre-existing practice, without being aware of its connotations. One of the results of this was that picnicking ceased to be associated with music and dancing and became a simple meal to which people were invited by a host. Another was that it became both more ‘genteel’ and – thanks to the idealisation of the countryside – more innocent.

The earliest reference to this new way of picnicking appears in John Harris’ *The Courtship, Merry Marriage, and Pic-Nic Dinner of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren* (1806), a children’s book. But such was its popularity that it soon found its way into more literary works, too. In 1808, Dorothy Wordsworth picnicked with 18 others on Grasmere Island and, though she admitted to being puzzled by the origins of the word, told her friend Catherine Clarkson that ‘Windermere gentlemen have a picnic every day’. In *Emma* (1816), too, Jane Austen provided a vivid portrait of a rustic picnic on Box Hill, albeit one marred by stilted conversation and a painfully awkward quiz."

**From NPR:** https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/05/26/186481802/picnicking-through-the-ages

Whether a shepherd, an explorer, a hunter or a fairgoer, people have been eating outside since the beginning of time.

"The dictionaries confirm the word 'picnic' first surfaced in the 18th century, so we were picnicking before we had the term," says research librarian and food historian Lynne Olver, who runs the Food Timeline website.

"The original definition of the word 'picnic' denoted something like a potluck," she says, "so you would have a bunch of people getting together, and each would be contributing to the feast."

One of the earliest accounts of picnicking, she says, comes from tales of Robin Hood. He and his Merry Men would informally dine on bread, cheese and ale under the trees, Olver says. But picnics, she notes on her site, also evolved from the tradition of elaborate movable feasts among the wealthy.

"Back in the day," she notes, "you had medieval hunting feasts, Elizabethan country parties."

Food historian Lynne Olver says middle-class Victorians picnicked on a tablecloth or bedspread like we do today. "The wealthier you were, the higher you dined," she says.

And in the Victorian era, picnics were very grand affairs indeed. In 1861, the definitive list of the Victorian picnic fare for England's upper class appeared in *Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management.* One could not eat outdoors without tables, linens, crystal, chairs, servants — and gourmet fare, of course. It's a far cry from our blankets and coolers, but the idea was ultimately the same.

Over time, picnic baskets have also evolved.

"Woven baskets have been used to port food from the very earliest times forward," Olver says. "The reason is they are light, they are sturdy, they are easily adapted for specific purposes. The largest ones seem to resemble trunks, and that might be where we get the picnic hamper from. Picnic basket kits as we know today — having placeholders for dishes and silverware and glasses and napkins — actually begin to appear at the very dawn of the 20th century."

## Hanami

Popular picnic time in Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanami