Come to dinner
Don Coldsmith, Syndicated Columnist
Monday, April 20, 2009
IF SOMEBODY invited you to dinner next Saturday, you’d know exactly what they meant: An evening event. But, only a few decades ago, such an invitation might mean something quite different, unless a time was specified.
Words change in meaning sometimes evolving (pardon the expression) into the exact opposite of the original. In quite recent times, for example, to say that somebody is “bad” means that he’s exceptionally GOOD at what he does.
A person who was “square” was once one who was TRUE, in the carpenter’s mode, both “on the level” and plumb, or upright. In the same sense, “plumb” meant completely, or exactly. A square person was completely honest and dependable. Sometime, in the 1950s, this began to be used sarcastically. The subtle change began to mean a square person was honest in the sense of trusting, maybe through lack of experience in the ways of the world. From there it was only a short step from uninformed or unknowing, as in naive, to unaware, in fact, maybe, a bit retarded, even stupid.
Back to “dinner” — the dictionary says it’s the “chief meal of the day” in the first definition. Our American culture was once almost totally based on agriculture. Dinner must be the most important, (that is, the biggest meal) to give the strength to get through the day with hard, physical work. After a hearty breakfast, to get a person through the morning, came the noon meal to fuel the afternoon’s productive labor: Dinner. The evening meal, SUPPER, was less important. Most of the day’s hard work was finished. The evening meal was likely to be a light snack before going to bed.
The other dictionary definition is a “formal meal to honor a person or an event.” That could be an evening meal, but generally a person calling an evening (meal) a dinner was suspected of “putting on airs” — assuming too much self-importance. It was quite the usual thing before World War II to have a formal meal, even, called a “supper,” as in a “church supper.”
“Dinner” was still basically a noon meal. The implication was that “lunch” meant a light snack for somebody who was: a) wealthy enough or b) shiftless enough that they had no intention of doing much work in the afternoon. Therefore, they wouldn’t need “dinner” at noon and could defer that until evening. Since nobody wanted to admit to laziness, to call the evening meal “dinner” carried the other suggestion, wealth. (I don’t have to work!)
We’ve come a long way since neighbors on the farm got together to form a “threshing crew,” moving to a different farm every day. The steam-powered threshing machine chugged and snorted to the next place each evening, when the men went home — to SUPPER.
Threshing time was HARD work. The wives who got together to fix dinner cooked large quantities of beef or pork. Fried chicken was frowned on for harvest time. It took too long to eat. It was said of anybody with a tremendous appetite that he (or she) “eats like a harvest hand.”
One other thing I remember about harvest time on an uncle’s farm as a very small kid — nobody had running water and there was a strong feeling that “strange water” might make you sick. Consequently, everybody among the dozen or so harvest hands carried his own jug of water from his well at home. They’d lay the jugs in the shade of the big maple for the day. Some were pottery jugs with a corn-cob stopper. Some were glass and many of either kind were covered with burlap or canvas stitched around them and soaked with water. The evaporation of that water kept the jugs’ contents cool through the heat of the day. It really did a pretty good job, although I didn’t fully understand how and why until years later in a college physics class.
Almost everybody eats dinner in the evening now, without guilt, shame or “putting on airs.” Times change. There are more jobs that demand less PHYSICAL labor, more mental and technical effort. It’s still possible, of course, to “eat like a harvest hand.”
See you down the road.
Author and columnist Don Coldsmith lives in Emporia.
madpoet (anonymous) says...
My husband and I have gone round and round about "supper" and "dinner" for years. I'm glad you cleared that up! I call the noon meal "lunch" and evening meal "supper" or "dinner" depending on my mood. Since dinner parties are usually in the evenings, I think of the evening meal as dinner. He's a farm boy and dinner was the noon meal and supper was the evening meal.
April 21, 2009 at 9:41 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )