Editing Picnic

{{Short description|Excursion at which a meal is eaten outdoors}}
{{Other uses}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2020}}
[[File:Thomas Cole's "The Picnic", Brooklyn Museum IMG 3787.JPG|right|thumb|upright=1.5|''A Picnic Party'' by [[Thomas Cole]], 1846]]
A '''picnic''' is a [[meal]] taken outdoors ([[Al fresco dining|''al fresco'']]) as part of an [[excursion]], especially in scenic surroundings, such as a [[park]], lakeside, or other place affording an interesting view, or else in conjunction with a public event such as preceding an open-air theater performance,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.picnicbasketshop.com/beautiful-picnic-locations-around-world/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180507153422/https://www.picnicbasketshop.com/beautiful-picnic-locations-around-world/|url-status=usurped|archive-date=7 May 2018|title=Beautiful Picnic Locations Around The World|language=en-US|date=4 May 2018}}</ref> and usually in summer or spring. It is different from other meals because it requires free time to leave home.<ref name=":0" />

Historically, in Europe, the idea of a meal that was jointly contributed to and enjoyed out-of-doors was essential to  picnic from the early 19th century.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 1181262|title = Picnicking in the Northeastern United States, 1840–1900|journal = Winterthur Portfolio|volume = 24|issue = 2/3|pages = 139–152|last1 = Hern|first1 = Mary Ellen W.|year = 1989|doi = 10.1086/496417| s2cid=161095742 }}</ref>

Picnickers like to sit on the ground on a rug or blanket.<ref name=":0" />  Picnics can be informal with throwaway plates or formal with silver cutlery and crystal wine glasses. Tables and chairs may be used, but this is less common.<ref name=":0" />

Outdoor games or other forms of entertainment are common at large picnics.  In public parks, a '''picnic area''' generally includes [[picnic table]]s and possibly built-in [[barbecue grill]]s, water faucets (taps), garbage (rubbish) containers, restrooms (toilets) and [[Gazebo|gazebos]] (shelters).

Some picnics are a [[potluck]], where each person contributes a dish for all to share. The food eaten is rarely hot, instead taking the form of [[sandwiches]], [[finger food]], fresh fruit, salad and cold meats. It can be accompanied by chilled wine, champagne or soft drinks.

==Etymology==
[[File:Picnic in Columbus.jpg|thumb|A picnic party assembling in [[Columbus, Ohio]], c. 1950]]
The word comes from the French ''pique-nique''.<ref>"picnic" in {{cite book|title=Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary|date=2020|edition=10th|publisher=Oxford University Press|url=https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/picnic_1}}</ref> However, it may also have been borrowed from the German word ''Picknick'',<ref name=":2">{{cite book|title=Oxford English Dictionary|date=|edition=|publisher=Oxford University Press|url=https://www.oed.com/dictionary/picnic_n?tab=factsheet#30564131}}</ref> which was itself borrowed from French.<ref>"Picknick" in {{cite book|title=Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen|date=1993|url=https://www.dwds.de/wb/etymwb/Picknick}}</ref>

The earliest English citation is in 1748, from [[Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield|Lord Chesterfield]] (Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield) who associates a "pic-nic" with card-playing, drinking, and conversation; around 1800, [[Cornelia Knight]] spelled the word as "pique-nique" in describing her travels in France.<ref name=":2" />

According to some dictionaries, the French word ''pique-nique'' is based on the verb ''piquer'', which means 'pick', 'peck', or 'nab', and the rhyming addition ''nique'', which means 'thing of little importance', 'bagatelle', 'trifle'.<ref>[https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=picnic "picnic"] in the American Heritage Dictionary</ref><ref>[https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/pique-nique "pique-nique"] in the Trésor de la langue française informatisé (in French)</ref><ref>[https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9P2516 "pique-nique"] in the [[Dictionnaire de l'Académie française]]</ref> It first appears in 1649 in an anonymous [[Broadside (printing)|broadside]] of [[Burlesque|burlesque verse]] called ''Les Charmans effects des barricades: ou l'Amitié durable de la compagnie des Frères bachiques de pique-nique : en vers burlesque (The Lasting Friendship of the Band of Brothers of the Bacchic Picnic).'' The satire describes Brother Pique-Nique who, during the civil war known as the [[The Fronde|Fronde]],<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Levy |first=Walter |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/845515926 |title=The picnic : a history |date=2014 |isbn=978-0-7591-2180-5 |location=Lanham, Maryland |oclc=845515926}}</ref> attacks his food with gusto instead of his enemies; [[Dionysus|Bacchus]] was the Roman god of wine, a reference to the drunken antics of the gourmand musketeers. By 1694 the word was listed in [[Gilles Ménage]]'s ''Dictionnaire étymologique, ou Origines de la langue françoise''<ref>"piquenique" in {{cite book|title=Dictionnaire étymologique, ou Origines de la langue françoise|location=Paris|publisher=Jean Anisson|date=1694|page=580|url=https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k8704524p/f702}}</ref> with the meaning of a shared meal, with each guest paying for himself, but with no reference to eating outdoors.<ref name=":0" /> It reached the ''[[Dictionnaire de l'Académie française]]'' in 1840 with the same meaning. In English, "picnic" only began to refer to an outdoor meal at the beginning of the 19th century.<ref name=":0" />

==History==
[[File:François lemoyne - piquenique durante a caçada 03-1.jpg|thumb|''Hunt Picnic'' by [[François Lemoyne]], 1723]]
The practice of an elegant meal eaten out-of-doors, rather than an agricultural worker's mid-day meal in a field, was connected with respite from hunting from the [[Middle Ages]]; the excuse for the pleasurable outing of 1723 in [[François Lemoyne]]'s painting (''illustration)'' is still offered in the context of a hunt.  In it, a white cloth can be seen, and, on it, wine, bread, and roast chicken.<ref name=":0" />

While these outdoors meals could be called picnics, there are, according to Levy, reasons not to do so. 'The English', he claims, 'left the hunter's meal unnamed until after 1806, when they began calling almost any alfresco meal a picnic'.<ref name=":0" /> The French, Levy goes on to say, 'refrained from calling anything outdoors a pique-nique until the English virtually made the word their own, and only afterwards did they acknowledge that a picnic might be enjoyed outdoors instead of indoors'.<ref name=":0" />

===Pic Nic Society===
The French Revolution popularized the picnic across the world. [[French emigration (1789–1815)|French aristocrats fled to other Western countries]], bringing their picnicking traditions with them.<ref>{{cite news |last=Lee |first=Alexander |date=2019-07-07|title=The History of the Picnic |url=https://www.historytoday.com/archive/historians-cookbook/history-picnic|language=en|work=History Today|access-date=2021-07-13}}</ref>

In 1802, a fashionable group of over 200 aristocratic Londoners formed the Pic Nic Society. The members were Francophiles, or may have been French,<ref name=":4">{{Cite news |last=Russell |first=Polly |date=5 July 2021 |title=Unpacking the Great British Picnic |work=The Food Programme |agency=BBC |type=A programme for BBC Radio Four |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xkz2 |access-date=14 July 2022}}</ref> who flaunted their love for all things French when [[France in the long nineteenth century|the wars with France lulled between 1801 and 1830]].<ref name=":0" /> Food historian Polly Russell however suggests that the Pic Nic Society lasted until 1850.<ref name=":4" /> The group's intent was to offer theatrical entertainments and lavish meals followed by gambling.<ref name=":0" /> Members met in hired rooms in Tottenham Street. There was no kitchen so all food had to be made elsewhere. Each member was expected to provide a share of the entertainment and of the refreshments, with no one particular host.<ref name=":0" />

===Victorian feasts===
[[Isabella Beeton|Mrs Beeton's]] picnic menus (in her ''[[Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management|Book of Household Management]]'' of 1861) are 'lavish and extravagant', according to [[Claudia Roden]]. She lists Beeton's bill of fare for forty persons in her own book ''Picnics and Other Outdoor Feasts'':

:A joint of cold roast beef, a joint of cold boiled beef, 2 ribs of lamb, 2 shoulders of lamb, 4 roast fowls, 2 roast ducks, 1 ham, 1 tongue, 2 veal and ham pies, 2 pigeon pies, 6 medium sized lobsters, 1 piece of collared calveshead, 18 lettuces, 6 baskets of salad, 6 cucumbers. Stewed fruit well sweetened and put into glass bottles well corked, 3 or 4 dozen plain pastry biscuits to eat with the stewed fruit, 2 dozen fruit turnovers, 4 dozen cheese cakes, 2 cold [[cabinet pudding]]s in moulds, a few jam puffs, 1 large cold [[Christmas pudding]] (this must be good), a few baskets of fresh fruit, 3 dozen plain biscuits, a piece of cheese, 6 lbs of butter (this of course includes the butter for tea), 4 quatern loaves of household bread, 3 dozen rolls, 6 loaves of tin bread (for tea), 2 plain [[plum cake]]s, 2 [[pound cake]]s, 2 [[sponge cake]]s, a [[biscuit tin|tin of mixed biscuits]], ½ lb of tea. Coffee is not suitable for a picnic being difficult to make.<ref name=":1" />

===Political picnics===
The image of picnics as a peaceful social activity can be used for political protest. In this context, a picnic functions as a temporary occupation of significant public territory. A famous example is the [[Pan-European Picnic]] held on both sides of [[Removal of Hungary's border fence with Austria|the Hungarian/Austrian border]] on 19 August 1989 as part of the struggle towards [[German reunification]]; this mass meal led indirectly to the [[collapse of the Soviet Union]].

On [[Bastille Day]] 2000, as a [[Millennium celebrations|Millennium celebration]], France created "l'incroyable pique-nique" (the incredible picnic), which stretched 1000&nbsp;km from the English Channel to the Mediterranean, along the ''[[Méridienne verte]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |author=Guardian Staff |date=2000-07-14 |title=Out to lunch: Meridian picnic unites France |url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/jul/15/3 |access-date=2022-07-05 |website=the Guardian |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2000-07-14 |title=1000 km pour "l'incroyable pique-nique" |url=https://www.nouvelobs.com/societe/20000713.OBS6069/1000-km-pour-l-incroyable-pique-nique.html |access-date=2022-07-05 |website=L'Obs |language=fr}}</ref>

===Church picnics===
Various religious denominations host annual church picnics for their congregation and local community.  These picnics traditionally take place from August to mid-October when church members and the community socialize over food, conversation and games.<ref>{{cite news |title=Churches reach out, have fun at picnics |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/142695898/?match=1&terms=%22Church%20picnic%22 |access-date=1 October 2024 |work=St. Louis Post-Dispatch a |date=31 Jul 1999 |page=27 |language=en}}</ref> In 1937, the Congregational Church of New York hosted 2,000 for its 41st annual event.<ref>{{cite news |title=2,000 to Attend Church Picnic |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1937/07/07/96744962.html?pageNumber=25 |access-date=1 October 2024 |work=The New York Times |date=7 Jul 1937 |language=en}}</ref> American psychologist and newspaper columnist Dr. [[George W. Crane]] once wrote that Christ held the first church picnic when he asked his disciples to feed the 5,000 who gathered to hear him speak.<ref>{{cite news |title=Christ Held First Church Picnic |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/606558557/ |access-date=1 October 2024 |work=Daily News-Post  (Monrovia, CA) |date=7 Feb 1961 |page=7 |language=en}}</ref>

==Types of contemporary picnic food==
Contemporary picnics for many people involve simple food. In ''[[The Oxford Companion to Food]]'', [[Alan Davidson (food writer)|Alan Davidson]] offers hard-boiled eggs, sandwiches and pieces of cold chicken as good examples.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Davidson |first=Alan |title=The Oxford Companion to Food |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2014 |location=New York |pages=620–621 |language=English}}</ref> In America, food writer Walter Levy suggests that 'a picnic menu might include cold fried chicken, [[devilled eggs]], sandwiches, cakes and sweets, cold sodas, and hot coffee'.<ref name=":0" />

Picnics are traditionally eaten at [[Glyndebourne Festival Opera|Glyndebourne Opera]] during the interval and Roden proposes a [[Champagne]] Menu, as made by the Argentinian pianist [[Alberto Portugheis]]: ''Mousse de Caviare'', ''Chaudfroid de Canard'', ''Tomatoes Farcies'' and ''Pêches aux fraises'' (caviare mousse, cold duck, [[stuffed tomatoes]] and peaches and strawberries).<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Roden |first=Claudia |title=Picnics and other outdoor feasts |publisher=Grub Street |year=1981 |edition=2012 |location=London |language=English}}</ref>

== Activities ==
[[File:WAYNE_GIPSON,_A_BELT_LOADER_IN_A_COAL_MINE_OWNED_BY_THE_TENNESSEE_CONSOLIDATED_COAL_COMPANY_AT_JASPER,_NEAR..._-_NARA_-_556507.jpg|thumb|A game of [[softball]] at a company picnic in the United States, 1974]]
In the mid 19th century, picnic games were organised by charities in the US to raise funds.  In the 1880s, companies started to sponsor such picnic events for publicity and to gain the favour of their employees.<ref>{{citation |author=Steven A. Riess |title=Sport in industrial America, 1850-1920 |pages=74,85,107 |year=1995 |isbn=9780882959160}}</ref> The black community was segregated at this time but to gain respectability, games such as baseball were organised by black politicians at picnics in municipal parks and fairgrounds.<ref>{{citation |author=Steven A. Riess |title=City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports |page=113 |year=1991 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=9780252062162}}</ref>

Games played at a picnic may use the food which has been brought.  Heavy food such as a [[watermelon]] may be used in a relay race which also serves the purpose of transport the food to the eating area.  After it is consumed, the seed or stones of fruit like cherries  may be used for a spitting contest game or marbles.<ref>{{citation |author=Terry Orlick |title=Cooperative Games And Sports |pages=83–84 |year=2006 |chapter=Picnic Games |publisher=Human Kinetics |isbn=9780736057974}}</ref>

If a large crowd is expected for picnic because it is a community event then some organisation will be required.  A schedule of events will be drawn up and events will be organised for different levels of ability and types of participant: men, women, adults and children.  Handbills, notices and tickets may be used to publicise and administer the events.<ref>{{citation |author=Clark L. Fredrikson |title=The Picnic Book |year=1942 |publisher=National Recreation Association}}</ref>

==Cultural representations==
[[File:Nobleman picnic.jpg|thumb|A nobleman with his entourage enjoying a picnic. Illustration from a French edition of ''The Hunting Book of [[Gaston III, Count of Foix|Gaston Phoebus]]'', 15th century]]

===Film===
{{See also|:Category:Picnic films}}
* The 1955 film ''[[Picnic (1955 film)|Picnic]]'', based on the [[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning [[Picnic (play)|play of the same title]] by [[William Inge]], was a multiple [[Academy Award|Oscar]] winner. A picnic is expected in the film but the writer does not include it: 'There is no picnic in Picnic'.<ref name=":0" /> The potato salad, bread and butter sandwiches and devilled eggs are left in the car as the characters Madge and Hal cannot resist each other's charms and Hal says 'We're not goin' on no goddamn picnic'.<ref name=":0" /> The film has been [[Picnic (1955 film)#Remakes|remade twice]] for television, in 1986 and 2000.
* ''[[The Office Picnic]]'' (1972) is a dark comedy set in an Australian Public Service office. It was written and produced by filmmaker [[Tom Cowan (filmmaker)|Tom Cowan]], who became famous for his work on the series ''[[Survivor (TV series)|Survivor]]''.
* In [[Peter Weir]]'s mystery film ''[[Picnic at Hanging Rock (film)|Picnic at Hanging Rock]]'' (1975), three girls and one of their teachers on a school outing mysteriously disappear. The only one who is later found remembers almost nothing. It is based on a 1967 [[Picnic at Hanging Rock (novel)|drama and mystery novel of the same title]] by Australian author [[Joan Lindsay]]. In 2018 it was [[Picnic at Hanging Rock (TV series)|remade for television]].
* In ''[[Bhaji on the Beach]]'' (1993, titled ''Picknick on the Beach'' in the German version), nine Indian women of various ages flee from their everyday lives by taking a joint excursion to the British resort town of [[Blackpool]]. They eat, according to journalist Simran Hans 'a flask of [[Tea|chai]], a metal tiffin of [[Papadam|poppadoms]] and sweaty [[samosa]]s in plastic Tupperware'.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Hans |first=Simran |date=12 May 2021 |title=The Dark Humour of Gurinder Chadha's Bhaji on the Beach |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2021/05/Gurinder-Chadha-Bhaji-on-the-Beach |access-date=28 June 2022 |website=The New Statesman Uk Edition}}</ref>

===Painting===
From the 1830s, [[Romanticism|Romantic]] American [[landscape painting]]s of spectacular scenery often included a group of picnickers in the foreground. An early American illustration of the picnic is [[Thomas Cole]]'s ''The Pic-Nic'' of 1846 ([[Brooklyn Museum of Art]]).<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Hern |first1=Mary Ellen W. |year=1989 |title=Picnicking in the Northeastern United States, 1840–1900 |journal=Winterthur Portfolio |volume=24 |issue=2/3 |pages=139–152 |doi=10.1086/496417 |jstor=1181262|s2cid=161095742 }}</ref> In it, a guitarist serenades the genteel social group in the [[Hudson River Valley]] with the [[Catskills]] visible in the distance. Cole's well-dressed young picnickers having finished their repast, served from splint baskets on blue-and-white china, stroll about in the woodland and boat on the lake.
*''[[The Luncheon on the Grass|Le déjeuner sur l'herbe]]'' (''The Luncheon on the Grass'') by [[Édouard Manet]] depicts a picnic. The 1862 painting juxtaposes a [[Nude (art)|female nude]] and a scantily dressed female bather on a picnic with two fully dressed men in a rural setting.
*A more contemporary portrayal is ''Past Times'' by [[Kerry James Marshall]], from 1997, which depicts a black family picnicking in front of a lake. Two radios laid on their gingham patterned picnic blanket emit the lyrics of [[The Temptations]] and [[Snoop Dogg]], while figures in the background engage in other activities synonymous with affluent white-American suburban culture.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://hyperallergic.com/310477/how-kerry-james-marshall-rewrites-art-history/|title=How Kerry James Marshall Rewrites Art History|date=12 July 2016|website=Hyperallergic|language=en-US|access-date=21 March 2019}}</ref>

[[File:Edouard Manet - Luncheon on the Grass - Google Art Project.jpg|thumbnail|''[[The Luncheon on the Grass]]'' by [[Édouard Manet]], 1862]]

===Literature===

{{Blockquote|<poem>A book of verse beneath the bough,
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness –
Ah, wilderness were paradise enow!</poem>
|[[Omar Khayyam]]|in his 12th century ''[[Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam|Rubaiyat]]''<ref>[http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:267618 Austin Chronicle] article ''A Loaf of Bread, a Jug of Wine – The simple but elegant art of picnic pairing'' published APRIL 22, 2005 says "But what constitutes the Perfect Picnic? Some sandwiches you throw together or grab and go? An elegant plate of poached salmon accompanied by a fruit and cheese platter? A couple of dogs on a grill? Each of these menus has its charms, but it doesn't get any better than the outdoor dining menu devised by Omar Khayyam in his 12th century The Rubaiyat."</ref>}}

* [[Jane Austen]] is one of the first English novelists who names picnics. She has two outdoor picnics in the [[novel]] [[Emma (novel)|Emma (1816)]]. One is in the strawberry garden at Donwell Abbey. Parties where guests would pick their own strawberries were popular in the early nineteenth century and Mrs Elton wearing a large bonnet and carrying a basket spoke at length about them.<ref name=":1" /> The second is at [[Box Hill, Surrey|Box Hill]] in [[Surrey]].<ref name=":0" /> This picnic turns out to be a sore disappointment, Frank Churchill said to Emma: 'Our companions are excessively stupid. What shall we do to rouse them? Any nonsense will serve...' <ref>{{cite book|url=https://gutenberg.org/etext/158 |title=Emma by Jane Austen – Project Gutenberg |publisher=Gutenberg.net |date=1 August 1994 |access-date=7 December 2009}}</ref> The food is described in vague terms as a 'cold collation'. While Jane Austen talked excessively about food in her private letters, she was less obliging in her novels.<ref name=":0" /> At both of these occasions, in Emma, when food is eaten outside it ends in 'ruffled tempers and hurt feelings' according to food historian Maggie Lane.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lane |first=Maggie |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/458295265 |title=Jane Austen and food |date=1995 |publisher=Hambledon Press |isbn=978-0-8264-3025-0 |location=London |oclc=458295265}}</ref>
* In [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson|Alfred Tennyson's]] poem Audley Court (1838) the picnickers eat dark bread and cold game pie in aspic and drink cider while they sing and chat about their old love affairs.<ref name=":0" /><blockquote>''There, on a slope of orchard, Francis laid''  ''A damask napkin wrought with horse and hound,''  ''Brought out a dusky loaf that smelt of home,''  ''And, half-cut-down, a pasty costly-made,''  ''Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay,''  ''Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks''  ''Imbedded and injellied; last, with these,''  ''A flask of cider from his father's vats,''  ''Prime, which I knew; and so we sat and ate''  ''And talked old matters over; who was dead,''  ''Who married, who was like to be, and how.''<ref>{{Cite web |last=Tennyson |first=Lord Alfred |date=15 July 2022 |title=Audley Court |url=http://www.online-literature.com/tennyson/708/ |access-date=15 July 2022 |website=The Literature Network}}</ref></blockquote>
* In [[Charles Dickens]]' ''[[The Mystery of Edwin Drood]]'' (1870) a 'potluck' meal is described "For dinner we'll have a tureen of the hottest and strongest soup available, and we'll have the best made-dish that can be recommended, and we'll have a joint (such as a haunch of mutton), and we'll have a goose, or a turkey, or any little stuffed thing of that sort that may happen to be in the bill of fare - in short we'll have whatever there is on hand.' But Dickens, Levy argues, 'differentiates potluck and picnic' when he adds that 'Miss Twinkleton (in her amateur state of existence) has contributed herself and a veal pie to a picnic'.<ref>{{cite book|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/564 |title=The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens – Project Gutenberg |publisher=Gutenberg.net |date=1 June 1996 |access-date=1 July 2011}}</ref><ref name=":0" />
*''[[The Wind in the Willows]]'' (1908), the classic children's novel by [[Kenneth Grahame]], begins with a much-quoted impromptu excursion; both the idyllic riverbank setting and the lavish provisions are Platonic ideals of the English country picnic. Rat is a well-organised host; a brief visit to his home is all he needs before he reappears "staggering under a fat, wicker luncheon-basket" which his friend Mole serves onto a tablecloth.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |title=The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame. |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27805/27805-h/27805-h.htm |access-date=2022-07-05 |website=www.gutenberg.org}}</ref>
* In [[Fernando Arrabal]]'s one-act drama ''Picnic on the Battlefield (1959)'' the young and inexperienced soldier private Zepo is visited unexpectedly by his devoted parents. They arrive with a picnic basket, which they unpack 'spreading sausage, hard-boiled eggs, ham, sandwiches, salad, cakes, and red wine on a cloth'.<ref name=":0" /> Zapo reminds them that 'discipline and hand-grenades are what's wanted in war, not visits'<ref name=":0" /> but they ignore him and invite an enemy soldier to join in their picnic. After wine and lacklustre conversation they start enthusiastically dancing to the [[pasodoble]] to the music of the [[phonograph]] they've brought with them. They are all killed by machine-gun fire. Levy recounts 'The shocked audience sits watching stretcher-bearers remove the bodies, listening to a stuck phonograph needle repeat the pasodoble tune'.<ref name=":0" />
* ''[[No Picnic on Mount Kenya|No Picnic on Mount Kenya: The Story of Three P.O.W.s' Escape to Adventure]]'' (1946), by Felice Benuzzi, is the true story of three Italian prisoners of war who, faced with years of tedium in a detention camp, decide to break out in order to climb Africa's second-highest mountain. "No expedition on the mountain was ever a picnic" [[Vivienne de Watteville]] had written in her book ''Speak to the Earth'' (1935) about her 1929 visit to [[Mount Kenya]].<ref>De Watteville, Vivienne, ''Speak to the Earth'' (London, 1935), p.276</ref> Benuzzi's English title, perhaps suggested by this line of de Watteville's, refers to the expression 'It was no picnic', meaning 'It was hard going', but with an ironic allusion to the climbers' meagre P.O.W. rations.
* The novel ''[[Roadside Picnic]]'' (1972) by [[Boris and Arkady Strugatsky]], was the source for the film ''[[Stalker (1979 film)|Stalker]]'' (1979) by [[Andrei Tarkovsky]]. The novel is about a mysterious 'zone' filled with strange and often deadly [[extraterrestrial life in popular culture|extraterrestrial]] artefacts, which are theorized by some scientists to be the refuse from an alien "picnic" on Earth.

===Music===
* In 1906, the American composer [[John Walter Bratton]] wrote a musical piece originally titled "The Teddy Bear Two Step". It became popular in a 1908 instrumental version renamed '[[Teddy Bears' Picnic]]', performed by the [[Arthur Pryor]] Band. The song regained prominence in 1932 when the Irish lyricist Jimmy Kennedy added words and it was recorded by the then popular [[Henry Hall (bandleader)|Henry Hall]] (and his BBC Dance Orchestra) featuring Val Rosing (Gilbert Russell) as lead vocalist, which went on to sell a million copies. 'The Teddy Bears' Picnic' resurfaced again in the late 1940s and early 1950s when it was used as the theme song for the ''[[Jon Arthur|Big Jon and Sparkie]]'' children's radio show. This perennial favorite has appeared on many children's recordings ever since, and is the theme song for the [[American Hockey League|AHL]]'s [[Hershey Bears]] hockey club. [https://web.archive.org/web/20030813183433/http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/tweenies/songtime/songs/t/teddybearspicnic.shtml lyrics and audio from the BBC]
* '[[Stoned Soul Picnic (song)|Stoned Soul Picnic]]', by [[Laura Nyro]] (released in 1968), was also a major hit for the group [[The 5th Dimension]].
*[[Roxette]]'s 1996 song '[[June Afternoon]]' depicts images of people having fun and eating in a park during a sunny warm June day.

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==External links==
{{wikt|picnic|picnicking}}
* {{Wikiquote inline}}
*{{cite web |url=https://picnicwit.com/about/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050712074218/http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/mostof_picnics.shtml |url-status=dead |archive-date=12 July 2005 |access-date=28 June 2022 |website=Picnic Wit |last=Levy |first=Walter |title=About Walter Levy: Picnic Wit}}
*{{cite web| url = http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/mostof_picnics.shtml | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20050712074218/http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/mostof_picnics.shtml | url-status = dead | archive-date = 12 July 2005 |title= BBC Food Picnic Guide}}

{{Parties}}
{{Meals_navbox}}
{{Adventure travel}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Picnic|*]]