Picnics

The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘picnic’ as ‘A fashionable social event in which each party present contributed a share of the provisions’. I don’t know about you, but I feel the research for this description must have been done many years ago. How times change! Today I see picnics as an eating-out event, the ‘hamper’ usually provided by one party. Having said that, a picnic does seem to bring family and friends together, with everybody helping prepare the food – so the dictionary could be right.

We think of picnics and food eaten in the open air as one and the same thing, but this was not always so. The origins of the word itself are fairly obscure, but probably derived from the French ‘pique-nique’, as the terms appeared around the same time, the late seventeenth century. The Pick-Nick Club was formed by a group of fashionable Londoners, who used to meet in each other’s houses, and provide different types of entertainment, as well as selected items of food and drink. The idea obviously spread, because in 1802, The Times was obliged to clarify the new fashion: ‘A Pic Nic supper consists of a variety of dishes. The Subscribers to the entertainment have a bill of fare presented to them, with a number against each dish. The lot he draws obliges him to furnish the dish marked against it, which he either takes with him in his carriage, or sends by a servant.’