As the school year is coming to a close, Banquet season has approached, a period of celebration and reminiscing of the past year of extracurricular endeavors for both teachers and students. Banquets are often associated with cord ceremonies, typically a dinner, team bonding, and reluctant goodbyes to graduating seniors.
While modern-day banquets often appear anywhere from event venues to restaurants, historically speaking they were much more private, reserved for the more “successful” members of society who earned the company of the elite.
Encylopedia.com states that the tradition of banquets originates back to ancient Mesopotamia, dedicated to celebrating the success of a good hunting season, and military victories, often attributed with festivals, and food.
As ancient civilizations often made rowdy celebrations of banquets, the evolution of the event transformed to a refined group enjoying the festivities, with a principal figure (much like a king or lord), observing the celebration, notably in Greece or Rome, and during the medieval period. Ten-day feasts were also common forms of celebration for victory, feasting on cattle, calves, sheep, and lambs, as well as pomegranates and grapes.
It wasn’t until the eighth century B.C.E… that funerals became attributed with banquets in respect and celebration of the deceased. This was often used to pay respects to the dead and was much more exposed when it came to the process of preparation for burial, commonly decorated with pottery vessels containing residual food from the celebration.
Although the gory details of previous banquet celebrations seem extreme, these celebrations were ones of honor, much like the modern-day ones hosted for high school accomplishments. This status carried its way to the early twentieth century when the first academic and extracurricular banquets were introduced.
The University of Wisconsin dedicated its annual Marching Band banquet to its founder, Edson W. Morphy during the 1927-28 school year, with the intent to allow the members of the marching band to look back on the season, share each other’s stories, and celebrate a year of success. They also attribute the celebration of the season as a last opportunity for graduates to experience the camaraderie of the band.
Banquets, although existing in one form or another across history, commemorating achievements for lifelong milestones such as weddings, anniversaries, and academic accomplishments, and even as an opportunity to look back on memories made, the modern banquet did not begin to take shape until the last 100 years.
The modern banquet as we now know it gradually made a name for itself in the second half of the twentieth century, used as a fundraising opportunity, occasionally with the inclusion of themes, and DSHS is no exception.
The annual banquet for the Theatre Department is themed “Hollywood,” inviting students to dress up from anything modern-day cinema to the glamor and glitz of 1950s stars like Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe.
DSHS school offers banquet celebrations for the Soccer Team , the Choir, the Speech and Debate team, the Dance team, FFA, and the Orchestra, to name a few.
So as the school year comes to a close and Banquet season has approached, the time to reminisce, look back on your accomplishments this year, and look forward to the achievements of next year is now, so thank coaches, enjoy teams, and celebrate the effort of this past school year DSHS!
