“Picture it. It’s a beautiful spring day. Blue skies overhead, lush green grass under your feet, and the scent of fresh flowers perfumes the air. You spread a quilt upon the ground and proceed to unpack your overflowing picnic basket. You smile as you see your kids frolicking about with their relatives.
Except your relatives are dead, and your kids are climbing on their gravestones. You’re having a picnic in a cemetery.
Wait. What?”
This quote was from an article titled “Party Like It’s 1899: Are Cemetery Picnics Making a Comeback?” by Patricia Hartley.
Where on earth did the topic Picnicking in the Cemetery come from? Well, it is that time of year again when the staff and volunteers at the Fenton History Center spend a great deal of time at Lake View Cemetery fine tuning the plans for our annual Saints and Sinners tours. So, while walking about, setting up locations for our actors and planning the routes that our tours would take, we began to think about the practice in Victorian times of taking a picnic to the cemetery.
During the 19th century, gathering in cemeteries for a picnic was common. One of the reasons was that at that time there were few parks in towns and cities, so folks gathered in cemeteries to enjoy not just a snack but a full-blown meal. As many cemeteries had beautiful large shade trees and often open areas that lent themselves to this type of gathering, people took advantage of them. Just think of Lake View Cemetery right here in Jamestown, it is a beautiful peaceful place to walk and reflect. Ladies dressed in their finest and carried parasols as they “promenaded” thru the cemetery on their way to the meal carrying baskets of tasty treats.
It is believed that eating in cemeteries became a “fad” after the Civil War and at a time of many deaths due children dying young, women dying in childbirth and to epidemics that raged across the country. All of these factors contributed to an increased number of deaths in families. Death was such a constant presence in their lives that meeting at the cemetery to talk and share a meal with other family members allowed them to feel close to the family members that had passed away.
This practice was not and is not unique to the United States. Every November 1, on All Saints’ Day, Latin American families and friends gather at the graves of loved ones to celebrate their lives. They tell stories, recite prayers, and leave flowers and candles. In the evening, the living share a meal and make sure to leave food and drink behind for the departed souls.
In Greece, on the first Sunday after Easter, the Sunday of St. Thomas, people gather at the cemetery in the village to set up tables and chairs and then enjoy a feast on top of the graves of their loved ones. The tradition itself goes back to the Homeric epics but was kept alive by Pontic Greeks- a group of ethnic Greeks originally from the shores of the Black Sea.
Like all things, this practice began to wane for a number of reasons. One reason was that early and untimely deaths began to decrease. Also, many towns and cities created parks for the public to enjoy. Today many cemeteries have No Picnicking rules posted.
But the fad is not entirely dead in the United States. In fact, in some areas, it is being revived. The country’s immigrant population includes communities carrying on traditions that call for meals with departed loved ones, and cemeteries will hold occasional public events in the spirit of an earlier era.
So, I wonder, did anyone picnic here at Lake View or any of the other cemeteries in our area?
