It’s that time of year—the weather is warming and you want to get out more. What better way to spend a sunny afternoon than on a picnic with family or friends! But what are picnics really and where did they come from? Find out here:
- Originally a picnic was a fashionable social event to which each guest contributed some food.
- In the first half of the 19th century, a Picnic Society met in London at the Pantheon, a place of public entertainment in Oxford Street.
- In the year 2000, a 600-mile-long picnic took place in France on July 14 to celebrate the first Bastille Day of the new millennium.
- The French started the modern fashion for picnics when they opened their royal parks to the public after the revolution of 1789.
- The use of the phrase “no picnic” to describe something unenjoyable dates back to 1884.
- The 1955 film Picnic, with William Holden and Kim Novak, was nominated for six Oscars and won two, for best art direction and best film editing.
- Our word “picnic” dates back to 1794, exactly 100 years after “pique-nique” was first seen in French.