Halloween, hot dogs or hamburgers, the typical clichés that we all thought came from the United States. And if we told you that hamburgers are German, that Coca Cola comes from France or that the favourite festival of witches and sweet-loving children comes from an Irish tradition, would you believe us? You might have to, because all of that is true! No, Americans didn’t invent everything….
1/ Halloween: Irish
Halloween was originally an Irish Celtic tradition, which was seen as the Celtic New Year! In fact, the calendar didn’t end on the 31st December, but on the 31st October. This ancient New Year’s Eve was the night of the god of the dead, Samhain. The nights were getting longer, and legend has it that ghosts visited the living on this night. To ward them off, the Celts had the ritual of dressing up in frightening costumes to scare off the ghosts. It was Irish immigrants who brought the Halloween tradition to the USA.
2/ The hamburger: Germany
The word “hamburger” is simply a reference to the town in which it was born, a German word for someone coming from Hamburg. The hamburger recipe was brought to the United States by German emigrants towards the end of the 18th century. It was originally a unique dish served on Hapag lines, a maritime company linking Hamburg with the United States. The dish consisted of a mixture of salted beef, onions and breadcrumbs, which was sometimes smoked to preserve it throughout the boat crossing.
3/ Coca Cola: French
Coca Cola could have been French! It was the American pharmacist John Pemberton who put forward the first Coca Cola recipe in 1885, at the time an alcoholic drink, calling it French Wine Coca, in reference to a French cocktail…. This ancestor of Coca Cola was at the time an alcoholic beverage made from coca leaves, kola nuts and damiana, inspired by a wine-based cocktail that was 100% French!
4/ The hot dog: German
It was German immigrants, missing their Frankfurt sausages, who brought the hot dog to the US. Legend has it that a New York sausage seller, who used to sell sausages with a pair of gloves so that his customers wouldn’t burn themselves, ran out of the gloves one day and asked a baker to make him little bread rolls in which he could put his famous sausages. The term “hot dog” refers to the Daschund, the German dog which was also brought to the States by German immigrants.
5/ Jeans: French
Jeans have a long history: they were first used in Genoa in the 16th century, a town famous for its woolen fabrics blended with linen which made, among other things, sails for ships as well as durable trousers for sailors. Next brought to America, the fabric’s name was anglicised and became “jeans”, in reference to the Italian city. In the 1950s, a certain Levi Strauss tried to sell miners some tarpaulins made from the same material. Firstly made in brown, the trousers took on the colour blue that we all know so well, and were made in a much lighter material, which was made from cotton. This material was called “denim” by the Americans, referring to twill from the town of Nîmes in France (de Nîmes), where the fabric had been produced since the 17th century.
