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 all 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?
A brief history of cemetery picnics, one hundred or so years ago this scenario would have seemed perfectly normal. Beginning in the late 1800s, cemeteries were prime picnic spots. Remember, in the aftermath of the bloody Civil War and in an age of cholera and yellow fever, cities created large new cemeteries to accommodate the dead. Family farms or sacred churchyards were no longer the only spots for burial grounds. These new-age cemeteries looked and functioned more like public parks than stark, spooky graveyards. They featured professional landscaping, winding paths, ponds, and pavilions. Some families simply wanted to continue their traditions of enjoying a meal with the family despite some of those attendees being deceased. A January 1885 article in the Fort Scott (Kansas) Daily Tribune describes a family’s Thanksgiving celebration in the cemetery. “We are going to keep Thanksgivin’ with our father as was live and hearty this day last year,” a son tells the carriage driver in the story, “and we’ve brought somethin’ to eat and a spirit-lamp to boil coffee.”
As more public parks became more prolific and the death rate began to decline in the early 20th century, cemetery picnics lost their appeal. Cemetery officials were also tiring of cleaning up after visitors who left food, bottles, and other debris behind on the graves of their loved ones. National cemeteries had forbidden food and drink in 1875, and public cemeteries finally started to follow suit. Alas, the “fad” of cemetery picnics died much like their silent, supine hosts. Most cemeteries and graveyards now have a written policy posted prohibiting picnics on the grounds, as they themselves are the ones who end up cleaning up the mess left behind. as the saying goes “that’s why we can’t have anything nice around here”. As well as the safety issue of as stated above ‘kids climbing on headstones’, nowadays headstones are broken, loose, or just completely toppled over and there’s an obvious issue with safety around them.
Nowadays, having a picnic at a cemetery may seem odd or even creepy, but it was a common practice for over 100 years. Starting in the early 1800s, families gathered to eat dainty ham and cucumber sandwiches, strawberries, and cookies while sitting next to their loved one’s gravestones. In fact, cemeteries were the ultimate place to gather for a picnic so it is quite likely that YOUR ancestors did this too. Would you like to volunteer to take photos of gravestones? Get started at https://BillionGraves.com/volunteer Questions? Email us at Volunteer@BillionGraves.com
