The history of "DINNER"

I have always associated dinner with the meal eaten at the end of the day,but it is surprising to know that it has not always been so! In the United Kingdom,dinner traditionally meant the main meal of the day.Prior to the mid-19th century,this 'dinner' meal was eaten in the middle of the day. As more and people started working in offices in towns and kept their families in suburbs,returning home in the middle of the day for a large meal,became inconvinient. By about 1860,meal times switched,and ladies at home began making a small mid-day meal called 'luncheon',followed by an early afternoon snack (children's meal time before bed),and then a large 'dinner meal' used to be prepared to eat when the man of the house got home from work.. Large formal evening meals were invariably described as 'dinners' (hence, also, the term dinner jacket which is a form of evening dress). Since farm families and working class people still most often worked from home, their meal times did not change as rapidly, and they continued to eat the main meal in the middle of the day, their 'dinner,' followed by a light early evening meal 'tea.' Because of these differences in custom depending on class, 'dinner' might mean the evening meal or the midday meal .

0 comments: