Sumer is icumen in

[damont]

Yesterday was Memorial Day in the USA (May Bank Holiday in the UK, IIRC). Which, according to the traditional Society types in New York / New England near where I grew up, is the Official Beginning Of Summer. (By this standard, summer officially ends on Labor Day.) And, as it is summer, it is now permissible to:

• Wear white outer clothing (this includes shoes). (Official uniforms or parts thereof are allowed to be white as appropriate year-round.)
• Drink, request, and serve iced tea (this includes hot or warm tea poured into a glass full of ice).

(I myself never quite understood these rules, but by the standards of those Societies I've always been a Philistine...)

Comments

[h3salthea.livejournal.com]

Oh bother..

One of the joys of living on the outer edges of the Hamptons was pooh-poohing those 'rules'...


...tho nothing beats driving in a beat-up Suzuki Sidekick around Westhampton Beach on Fourth of July weekend with your very large, blond, biker-looking viking stickjock bud hanging out in the back seat in his wild tye-dye shirt, and my rather large, rotund, *obviously* Italian husband sitting in the passinger seat....*rather* shirtless...

...I believe we caused at least 10 cases of shock-whiplash....

*smirks*

We weren't philistines...we were screamin heathens!

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Oooooh... very amusing mental picture, that! Go youse for "freaking the mundanes" as it were...

I was from New Jersey, so going to the Hamptons was not something any of us would do for just a long weekend. And did Catholics even *go* to the Hamptons? I was regarded as a philistine because Catholic society was not considered quite as fashionable as either the Protestant group or the Jewish, and thus did not set general standards.

[liadan-m.livejournal.com]

I was always taught that Easter was the appropriate day that you could start wearing white shoes, and labor day the last day.

*grins*

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Different area of the country, somewhat different rules. I gather that wearing white was allowed earlier in the spring in more "southern" society groups -- limited to shoes in some places, not in others. I'm till not familiar with midwestern society patterns, but St Louis could be a little of both (midwest and south).

[liadan-m.livejournal.com]

oh, St. Louis is the northern most southern city. Ice Tea is sweetened, cornbread is not, biscuts are served instead of rolls starting just south of town, and the first question about your history is "where did you go to high school?"

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think Baltimore is further north than St Louis, and Polite Society in Bal'mer is *definitely* Southern in origin... but more of a mix today, as northeastern ways have started to mix in as far south as Norfolk. (E.g., ice tea can be either sweet-tea or unsweetened until you hit North Carolina. Of course there are now *three* iced-tea dividing lines. Biscuits vs rolls depends on what group you're with, from the Mason-Dixon line all to way down to just north of Richmond -- but that was ALL biscuit-only territory until after World War II.)