A Welcome Year To Celebrate International Picnic Day
Text and photos by Ray Balogh
InkFreeNews
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International Picnic Day is June 18, which this year falls on a Friday. Photo provided by Google Images.
WARSAW — After the ouster of the aristocracy in the French Revolution (1789-1799), the previously disenfranchised populace flocked to the nation’s royal parks, which were reopened for public use. There they engaged in a celebration of food and games called a “pique-nique,” a phrase of ambiguous meaning and disputable origin.
Nevertheless, history is replete with interesting parallels, and this summer, more than two centuries later, families and groups of friends will emerge from their pandemic-prompted, government-mandated domestic cocoons to enjoy the felicitous American tradition known as the picnic.
Friday, June 18, is International Picnic Day, and Americans will do their fair share in commemorating the day all summer long, swarming to parks and beaches and dining al fresco on sandwiches, grilled meat and all the trimmings, playing Frisbee and lawn games, taking a cool dip in the lake and generally enjoying the fresh air.
Picnics are celebrated in unique forms around the world. The Japanese enjoy their festivities during cherry blossom season, with department stores selling prepackaged lunch boxes and vendors peddling their foodstuffs among picnickers.
Argentinians celebrate the Christmas holiday with picnics featuring roasted or barbecued turkey.
Australian picnics include dancing, tugs-of-war and lizard racing. Germans play their outdoor games in the nude.
In New Zealand, picnickers feast on roasted oxen and baked potatoes cooked over fire pits and sip on afternoon tea.
In Scandinavian countries, the game of choice is kubb, a mixture of bowling, horseshoes and chess, where short, thick dowel rods, known as batons, are pitched underhand to knock over small wooden towers.
Turkish outdoor revelers go all out, bringing cushions, rugs, furniture and string lighting to their picnics, which often last into the night.
The Greek celebrate “Clean Monday,” their start of the Lent season, with picnics featuring mussels, octopus and unleavened bread. Italians’ big day for a picnic is Easter Monday. Scotch eggs are a staple at British picnics.
On July 14, 2000, the French celebrated the Bastille Day, which signaled the people’s victory in the French Revolution, with a 600-mile-long picnic, and in 2009 the Portuguese set the Guinness World Record for the largest picnic with 22,232 attendees.
The 1955 movie, “Picnic,” starring William Holden and Kim Novak, was nominated for six Oscar awards and won two.
The first table designed exclusively for picnics appeared in the late 1800s.
We asked several folks in Warsaw and Winona Lake about their reminiscences, plans and advice for picnickers. Their answers appear below.
- PEGGY GENSHAW — “My favorite memories were my dad and uncle making homemade ice cream with an old hand-cranked ice cream machine, and also my uncle bringing over his pony and cart and taking all us kids on rides. We would have our picnics at my parents’ farm in Noble County between Cromwell and Kimmell.”
- PAULA SCHOLL — “I haven’t been on a picnic in a long time, but I’d like to take my grandkids on a picnic by the lake this summer. In the past my favorite menu items were a baloney sandwich or a peanut butter, lettuce and mayonnaise sandwich, but the secret is you have to get the leaf lettuce fresh out of the garden.”
- DON BOWERS — “We never had picnics until I was in college, when some of my best memories were going on picnics with my friends in the mountains or on the beach in California. We had hot dogs and hamburgers the way they were meant to be made. The good hot dogs had ketchup, mustard and relish. We’re planning a picnic at a pond this year.”
- ROSIE BOWERS — “My favorite picnic food was fried chicken, probably because of all the grease. It was always homemade, because we couldn’t just go to a place to get a sandwich or chicken. We’re visiting from California, but we like Indiana because it’s green.”
- KAMDIN RICHARDSON — “My favorite person to go on a picnic with is my mom. I like hot dogs and I like to play on the slip and slide and play baseball with my older brother, Bentley.” Kamdin is the son of Travis and Jessica Richardson of Warsaw.
- DUSTIN SHIERMAN — ”My advice for people who want a nice picnic is to get a really good blanket.”