Beautiful cathedrals. Efficient trains. Late dinners. This is what springs to mind when an American thinks about Europe. Unfortunately, only the first is accurate. The second is a myth (more on that another day), and the third is halfway there. Europeans do not eat as late as common wisdom would have one believe.
A slew of data says otherwise. Websites and academic studies look at typical eating times from around the globe. There is quite a bit of variation. Some cultures, especially France and Spain, are widely known for their late dinners. Visit any French town and the typical restaurant won’t open until 7 p.m. Restaurants in Spain often won’t open until 8 p.m. That’s far different than in the United States, where restaurants usually won’t close during the afternoon, and 7 p.m. is often the peak dining hour. Being from the Midwest, I know that dinner should be served promptly at 5 p.m., with a 6 p.m. dinner only acceptable if you’re running late or it’s a special occasion. This is only a half-jest. In college, both my dorm cafeteria opened for dinner at 5:00 p.m., and there would be a line of hungry students ready to enter. To this day, I love eating at 5:30 p.m.. The bonus of this approach is it’s very easy to make dinner reservations.
So if French Restaurants are opening at 7 p.m., and Spanish ones at 8 p.m., where’s the inaccuracy? It’s because 7 p.m. isn’t 7 p.m. everywhere. In some places, 7 p.m. is late. In others, 7 p.m. is early.
Confused?
Remember, the time of day is merely the number that humans have assigned to a time when the sun is in a position in the sky. We think of 5 a.m. as being early, usually right around sunrise. 8 p.m. is usually around twilight, at least in the summer. 12 p.m., or noon, originally referred to as solar noon, or when the sun is highest in the sky. That’s where a.m. and p.m. come from. a.m. stands for ante meridiem, or before midday, and p.m. stands for post meridiem, or after midday. The truly punctilious know that saying 12:00 p.m. is inaccurate, it should be just 12:00 m, or meridiem. The point being that “time of day” is an arbitrary number humans base on the sun.
Before time zones, each town would set its own time based on when solar noon occurred. When the sun was highest in the sky, the local clock tower would ring 12 times. Everyone in that town set their watch by the same clock. Thus, each town had its own time that would differ by several minutes from the towns around it. In that way it was similar to my high school, where each classroom had a clock that was inexplicably 1-4 minutes different from every other clock in the building. This system of each town having its own time worked fine until railways started being built. Now, for the first time in world history, having towns linked at the same time was important. If one town had a time five minutes later than another, that could spell disaster for trains moving along the same rail. By the end of the 19th century, time was standardized. The day when Eastern Time and Central Time in the United States became formalized, November 18th, 1883, was even known as “the day of two noons”, because everyone had to reset their clocks.
Once time zones were set, large regions were now linked to the second. It also detached 12:00 p.m. from solar noon. On the eastern edge of a time zone, the time on the clock is earlier for any position of the sun. The sun rises and sets at a time with a lower number. On the western edge of the time zone it’s the opposite. This often leads to grumbling for those, like me, who have managed to spend our entire lives on the eastern edge of different time zones. We watch in envy as it gets dark outside, while those in the same time zone are still basking in the sun. Take the difference between Portland, Maine, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, both located in the Eastern Time Zone. The luckless Portlanders have to deal with a 4:03 p.m. sunset in December. The fortunate souls of Grand Rapids get an additional hour of sun each evening, with their earliest December sunset at 5:07 p.m.. Of course, the Michiganders have to deal with a later sunrise in the morning, as well as having to spend their lives in Michigan, but people generally prefer more sun after the work day is over.
Countries have been fiddling with their time zones ever since. China famously has one time zone for the entire nation. Pity the million-odd residents of Kashgar, in western China, who have to live in the same time zone as Beijing, over 2,000 miles away. They may get to enjoy a 7:30 p.m. sunset on the winter solstice, but the sun doesn’t rise until a depression-inducing 10:13 a.m.. Working a 9 a.m.-5 p.m. workday in Kashgar would be equivalent to working 6 a.m.-2 p.m. in New York. Which some people may prefer, but I like being at least close to sunrise when I head to the office. Then there are the Irish, who started a petition to move their time zone to align with Japanese time during the summer of 2002. Why the summer of 2002? To align with the World Cup, of course.
Irish soccer insanity aside, countries set their time zones using two criteria. The first is to align themselves to other nations with which they have strong economic ties. The second is to shift the time so that the sun will set later and give their citizens more evening daylight. In some places, this has led to 12 p.m. becoming totally divorced from solar noon. This is the true reason that some European countries have “late” dinners.
Take Paris, which from March to October has its solar noon around 1:45 p.m.. Or Madrid, where solar noon reaches an extreme 2:21 p.m. in July. Sure, their dinners may be late, at least as far as the number on the clock, but that is, in large part, due to them being in a skewed time zone. Having dinner in Madrid at 9 p.m. in July is a mere six-and-a-half hours after solar noon. In other words, as related to the sun’s zenith, not that late. In fact, having dinner in Madrid in July at 9 p.m. is equivalent to having dinner in Boston in November at 6:15 p.m. Both are about six hours and a half hours after solar noon. Across Western Europe, people may be eating “late” according to the time on the clock, but their dinner isn’t much later in the solar day than it is in the US.
So for Americans who view their European brethren as sophisticated, or for Europeans who think Americans are simple-minded, it’s time to recalibrate. Don’t think of an appropriate dinner hour as being the arbitrary time on the clock, think of it as being the length of time from solar noon. Most places sup 6-7 hours after the sun is highest in the sky. For those in Paris in June, that is 8-9 p.m.. For those in Chicago in December, it’s from 6-7 p.m.. Outside of the Greeks, who somehow eat dinner at 10 p.m. despite having solar noon around 1 p.m., that’s the norm. It’s the time zones that are different, not the dinner times.
5 p.m. dinners are wonderful everywhere, though.