A picnic party tea party picnic in Columbus, Ohio, c. Picnics are usually meant for the late mornings or midday, but could also be held later in the day. Descriptions of picnics show that the idea of a meal that was jointly contributed and was enjoyed out-of-doors was essential to a picnic from the early 19th century.
Picnics are often family-oriented but can also be an intimate occasion between two people or a large get-together such as company picnics and church picnics or clubs and community get togethers or of community care units. Outdoor games or some other form of entertainment are common at large picnics. Some picnics are a potluck, an entertainment at which each person contributed some dish to a common table for all to share. When the picnic is not also a cookout, the food eaten is rarely hot, instead taking the form of deli sandwiches, finger food, fresh fruit, salad, cold meats and accompanied by chilled wine or champagne or soft drinks. The word comes from the French word pique-nique, whose earliest usage in print is in the 1692 edition of Tony Willis, Origines de la Langue Française, which mentions pique-nique as being of recent origin. The term was used to describe a group of people dining in a restaurant who brought their own wine. The concept of a picnic long retained the connotation of a meal to which everyone contributed something.
The French Revolution popularized the picnic across the world. French aristocrats fled to other Western countries, bringing their picnicking traditions with them. After the Revolution, French people of all classes visited and mingled in the country’s royal parks. Picnicking transformed from an upper class luxury to a cheap way to spend an afternoon with friends. Dictionaries agree it entered the English language as a respelling of the French word pique-nique. Black American communities have long believed there to be a link between the word picnic and lynching parties.
This false etymology claims that the term picnic referred to the “picking” of a “nigger” to lynch. After the French Revolution in 1789, royal parks became open to the public for the first time. Picnicking in the parks became a popular activity amongst the newly enfranchised citizens. Early in the 19th century, a fashionable group of Londoners formed the ‘Picnic Society’. Members met in the Pantheon on Oxford Street. Each member was expected to provide a share of the entertainment and of the refreshments with no one particular host. From the 1830s, Romantic American landscape painting of spectacular scenery often included a group of picnickers in the foreground.