Do folks still dress for regular dinner?

[coachvu]

Doesn't the phrase "dress for dinner" imply a tux? If I remember correctly, that was the tradition in the Magnificent Ambersons.

 

[Percy Trimmer]

Originally Posted by Meursault

As already pointed out, in the UK at least, dinnner among the upper and middle-classes has always been the evening meal. Supper (a term still frequently used among selfsame classes) was and is a lighter, informal evening meal.


Dinner was originally the main meal of the day whenever it was served. When it was served in the middle of the day a later, lighter, meal called supper would follow in the evening. When it came to be served in the evening 'lunch' (I think the word actually means 'between meals') was offered earlier. Today dinner implies a formal meal (however you interpret that); supper a less formal one.

Originally Posted by VKK3450

If a dinner jacket is only meant to be worn after 6 pm, then doesnt that mean that dinner has to be served after 6, so therefore its an evening meal?


The dj was only invented in the 1920s or 30s by which time dinner had become an evening meal (at least for those who wore one).

Originally Posted by coachvu

Doesn't the phrase "dress for dinner" imply a tux? If I remember correctly, that was the tradition in the Magnificent Ambersons.

Yes.

 

[Dewey]

Another trend that develops with changing dinner times is better indoor lighting.

Dinner moved later as indoor lighting (especially electric lighting) became more tolerable and pleasant, and people began to stay up longer. It's no joke to say that the day ended much earlier in 1850 than it does now. People got up earlier, indoor lighting was not so available or practical, and there was no daylight savings time.

The meals were breakfast, dinner, and supper. Breakfast might be a cup of coffee. Dinner was the main meal, and noon, or maybe noon to three, depending on what the family did after dinner, was the best time for it. Dinner was a sit-down affair that took time and involved rituals of conversation and hospitality. Supper might be light or heavy. Some people skipped supper. The classic heavy supper, for dissipate young men who spent their antebellum evenings and nights in a dimly-lit tavern, was a plate of fried oysters. Folks like Ben Franklin ranted against the poor economy of eating much at the end of the day. My grandmother, very much a Poor Richard type, would scold us for saying we were hungry before bed. "You're not hungry," she'd say, "you're tired."

The fact that dinners take place, or end, in what they called "the evening," might be misleading. Evening included much of what we call the afternoon. Today we think of the "evening" as including many hours after dark, but they called the time where the sun was down, "night," and they would be getting to bed. I am writing now about life before cheap and practical indoor lighting--18th and most of 19th century America. 3pm would be evening time, for sure, especially in a northern climate in the winter. Again, I am not so well versed in English social history, but I doubt it was much different than life in New England. London, however, may have had some exceptional habits with its street lighting and busy metropolitan workplaces.

This is not to say that there were not day-long festivities where people dressed formally, ate dinner, and then found themselves in a ballroom before going home at one in the morning. They would stay up late. There are plenty of stories of Sixteen-year-old Sally coming home after midnight from the ball. It's just that such routines were not common.

So the notion that a gentleman wore his best clothes for a family dinner was common before 1880, and mundane. And not so interesting when you consider that most gentlemen only had sleeping clothes and "best" clothes, and that the dinner might be the first event of any day that involved much time with company or society. Again, this is especially the case for men of leisure. Working men - even wealthy merchants - were not always regarded or imitated as "gentlemen."

Large fancy formal dinners, where members of the Better Business Bureau or some fraternal organization gathered, in formal dress, for an after-workday meal followed by a speech, cigars, and drinking -- and going well into the night -- these are more of a 1880-1950 tradition. And I kinda doubt there were many 1945 families who thought themselves living in the style of such men if they were raised with the habit of not appearing at the dinner table in pajamas or clothes soiled from a morning ramble through the woods.

 

[Will]

Working people ate their main meal in the middle of the day.

The British aristocracy that defined most of the dress conventions we followed until recently took their main meal in the evening and it was a white tie occasion until djs became commonplace.

 

[Dewey]

Will, can you date the period of daily, white-tie-only, English aristocratic evening dinners? About when did this routine begin and end?

 

[Percy Trimmer]

Originally Posted by Will

Working people ate their main meal in the middle of the day.

The British aristocracy that defined most of the dress conventions we followed until recently took their main meal in the evening and it was a white tie occasion until djs became commonplace.

I think working people ate their dinner whenever they could find (or were given) the time. What was available in factory canteens came to be the main meal and so became 'dinner'. Similarly, the midday meal in English schools is traditionally called 'dinner' because it was originally provided for poorer children for whom it was the main (and probably the only cooked) meal of the day.

 

[Qasimkhan]

Yes, I always wear clothes for dinner. Don't you?