It's Tea Time

One of the most usual British phrases that you can hear if you' will be around of the British reality.

Now lets see which is the true around of this ''British tradition''?

So how all this started?

Back to the days prior to the introduction of tea into Britain, the English had two main meals, breakfast and dinner. Breakfast was ale, bread, and beef. During the middle of the eighteenth century, dinner for the upper and middle classes had shifted from noontime to an evening meal that was served at a fashionable late hour. Dinner was a long, massive meal at the end of the day.


Afternoon tea may have been started by the French. According to the monthly newsletter called Tea Muse, in the writings of Madame de Sévigné (1626 to 1696), one of history's greatest letter writers on life in 17th Century France:

It's a little known fact, but after its introduction to Europe in the 17th century tea was tremendously popular in France. It first arrived in Paris in 1636 (22 years before it appeared in England!) and quickly became popular among the aristocracy. . . Tea was so popular in Paris that Madame de Sévigné, who chronicled the doings of the Sun King and his cronies in a famous series of gossipy letters to her daughter, often found herself mentioning tea. "Saw the Princesse de Tarente [de Sévigné wrote]... who takes 12 cups of tea every day... which, she says, cures all her ills. She assured me that Monsieur de Landgrave drank 40 cups every morning. 'But Madame, perhaps it is really only 30 or so.' 'No, 40. He was dying, and it brought him back to life before our eyes.' . . . Madame de Sévigné also reported that it was a Frenchwoman, the Marquise de la Sablière, who initiated the fashion of adding milk to tea. "Madame de la Sablière took her tea with milk, as she told me the other day, because it was to her taste." (By the way, the English delighted in this "French touch" and immediately adopted it.)


As we've read above history can plays with us all these funny games but is good to know about origins and traditions.


Now for the end, I don't know if you are a fan of the ''tea time'' but it is the loveliest brake of the day.

Its the time of the day that you are ready enough to chill and talk about everything. Serious or funny things. A cap of tea can make any conversation better.

So...Enjoy your cup of tea and take care.

George.