HOW SUNDAY DINNER BECAME SUNDAY BRUNCH.

It's almost all about the calories.

The terms “supper” and “dinner” can be used pretty interchangeably, but “dinner” is typically used more often. Regardless, if someone says one or the other, most people will know they’re referring to the last meal of the day. But we came across some shocking news: they’re not the same thing after all and if your grandparents or parents used the term “supper,” there’s a good chance your ancestors were farmers.

“[In the 18th and early 19th centuries,] Americans regularly ate a light supper as their evening meal because they were eating dinner—the biggest meal of the day—around noon,” food historian Helen Zoe Veit told NPR. The purpose of eating their biggest meal at noontime was so farmers would have more strength and energy to get through the rest of their workday, according to the English Language & Usage Stack Exchange. Dictionary.com confirms, “dinner” doesn’t necessarily refer to a specific time of day. It simply means the main meal of the day. “Supper,” however, stems from the Old French word “souper,” meaning “evening meal.”

That checks out in part, longtime readers might recall from this visit to a threshing bee in Dalton, Minnesota. "Among other things, they re-enact a proper thresherman's dinner (the noon meal, for you clueless coasties) of hot dish and jello salad with store coffee, and there's a steam train calling at an honest to Yim Hill Great Northern depot."  There's also a New England custom of referring to the evening meal as "supper," er, "suppah," although that, too, might have its rural origins.

So what changed? Eating the biggest meal of the day around noon started to become a thing of the past when more Americans began working away from their homes and farms. “They couldn’t readily return home to cook and eat in the middle of the day,” says Veti. And so, more and more people shifted their main meal of the day to the evening, when they could spend more time enjoying their food and spending time with their family.

Well, you couldn't really speak of a "three martini dinner," could you? I will withhold comment on the emergence of that twee "luncheon" that got into society circles. As Sunday conventions of fasting before church changed, so too might have changed the idea of that big midday Sunday meal.  If you're not getting up early to spruce up for church, maybe skipping breakfast and putting something together late morning makes sense as well.