Picnic: Let's Take Out The Lunch Baskets On The Grass

2024 Author: Jasmine Walkman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 08:29

The good days are here again. The sun is warm, the flowers rejoice, the trees sprinkle the green freshness of the world. Now is the time to take out her tablecloths lunch baskets on the grass.

A common practice today, the picnic is almost as old as humanity. Even in antiquity, people practiced the art of eating on the grass. Eating out and on the move was associated with the rural way of life. Virgil also describes the eating of shepherds in his Bucolics. The shepherds ate small things surrounded by their flocks.

The etymology of the word picnic comes from the French piquer (in the sense of a bite) and from niques (a term from the 13th century, which meant something of little value).

In the Middle Ages, people often ate outdoors and without a table - the peasants in the fields, but also the aristocrats during the hunt or when traveling. At that time and until the 18th century, the table was a movable element of everyday life. To set the table literally meant to place, to install a table. People put a board on higher devices, resembling a kind of trestle - in the room or wherever they were. The dining rooms as we know them did not yet exist.

But since the 17th century, the practice of having lunch on the grass has become widespread. And like many of the customs of the art of eating, it is the aristocracy that promotes it. The picnic it becomes a meal in which everyone contributes.

The return to nature, called for by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century, was embraced by the nobles and they began to dine more and more on the grass.

The 19th century is the golden years of picnics. Picnics allow Republicans and revolutionaries in France to take advantage of the magnificent views of the royal gardens. The picnic is sung in literature (Stendhal, Zola, Maupassant) and in the fine arts, where it becomes masterpieces (Manet, Monet…).

This is the time when the inconveniences of urban life and industrialization are beginning to emerge. Lunch on the grass allows people to experience the pleasures of nature again.

Today, picnics are more modern than ever. It is no longer limited to ordinary food, but has become a real art of living. It can be transformed depending on the case, in picnic gourmet, in a luxury picnic, in an eco-picnic or even to acquire the appearance of a garden party.

Now there are even restaurants that offer organizing a picnic - a good opportunity to give a person a five-star lunch outdoors at a decent price. Without plastic plates and cups, but with exquisite utensils and dishes.

As they say - the possibilities are many. It is enough to have a meadow and delicious food! The other is good company and cheerful mood! Have a good time!