Older Than Automobiles: Tailgating’s Ancient Roman Roots

Anyone who’s attended a college football or NFL game knows that the real party starts outside the stadium. Hours before kickoff, fans flood parking lots armed with coolers, portable grills, and bluetooth speakers to bask in the crisp autumnal weather, fill their bellies with burgers and beer, and mingle with fellow tailgaters.

Some attendees might not even go to the game. They go for the food, drinks, and, above all, the camaraderie. But while the practice is inextricably tied to American football, its roots actually trace back all the way to antiquity.

This discovery came from a 2015 cultural analysis on tailgating by Tonya Williams Bradford, a then-assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, and John F. Sherry Jr., the then-Herrick Professor of Marketing at the same college. In the report, the authors note that the premise of tailgating dates back to the ancient Roman and Greek traditions of fall harvest celebrations, a.k.a. “Vestavals.”

Named after Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth and home, these publicly held, convivial events honored the abundance of food available after the fall harvest. Attendees would gather and feast together as a sort of last hurrah before the weather turned cold and food supplies waned.

“Football season starts at the end of summer, goes through fall, and ends on winter’s doorstep, Sherry told The New York Times in 2013, in reference to an earlier study he had done on the tradition. “Tailgating is an autumnal rite that celebrates abundance in the face of austerity.”

And it’s true. Early fall is the only time of year when the last of summer crops, like tomatoes, share stands at the farmer’s markets with autumnal bounties like squash, brussels sprouts, and pears. But tailgating’s connection to ancient Greece and Rome doesn’t stop there.

As Bradford and Sherry point out in their 2015 analysis, modern tailgating “brings hestial and hermetic into intimate association,” just as fall harvest festivals did. Hestia is the Greek equivalent of Vesta, making her the goddess of the hearth, home, and family. Meanwhile, “hermetic” refers to Hermes, the Greek god of trade, messengers, language, and travel.

According to the analysis, both practices embrace “performance in plain sight of thousands of individual acts of hospitality, the public enactment of generosity (as well as such dark side behaviors as invidious comparison and theft), and the forging of community through the sacred-celebratory vehicle of the party.”

Yet, this doesn’t explain how the practice manifested across the Atlantic or how it got the name “tailgating.” Concerning the former, Bradford and Sherry note that one of the earliest American tailgates happened during the First Battle of Bull Run during the Civil War in July 1861. It may sound like a rather grim event to make a spectacle of, but allegedly hundreds of people traveled to Manassas, Va., bringing along picnic baskets and bottles of wine to enjoy while watching the battle. In November 1869, tailgating was adopted by the world of sports when spectators flocked to New Brunswick, N.J., to watch the first college football game between the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) and Rutgers.

As for the name “tailgate,” it’s technically a term for a board on the back of a wagon used for loading up cargo. When lowered, the board also functions as a seat or table. “As vehicles evolved, the tailgate morphed into the back door of a truck bed and eventually (in the form of a trunk hatch) came to refer to the rear region of the automobile,” Bradford and Sherry note. “Since feast issues forth from the back of the vehicle, the part is used for the whole to characterize the gathering.”

These days, tailgating isn’t confined to the football world. People tailgate before all sorts of sports games and even concerts. The practice has also evolved to the point where tailgaters now chow down on suckling pigs with all the fixins’, pop Champagne, and set up TVs and full bars outside stadiums before kickoff. Still, it retains the core elements of its ancient Greek and Roman roots: domesticity, portability, and celebration through food and beverages.

The article Older Than Automobiles: Tailgating’s Ancient Roman Roots appeared first on VinePair.