Eat All Your Food and Make It a Nice Day Tomorrow

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kelly from Beautiful Butte America.

Beautiful Butte Where?

Butte America.

Butte Montana, really.

Butte America.

Is that what they say in Butte Montana?

Yes.

So it’s a it’s a nickname for never heard that.

No, me neither.

What’s on your mind though?

What’s a what’s your language y thing?

Okay, yeah.

So when I was a kid a long time ago in Minnesota, my grandma would say, make it a nice day tomorrow when we would be finishing a meal and there is just a little bit of food left.

We took that to mean to eat up all the food.

I never heard it anywhere else except in my immediate family.

And then recently a childhood friend said a similar phrase, it was make it a clear day tomorrow, and it was in the same exact context.

So I guess I’m just wondering where does that come from?

What does it mean and how does finishing food affect the next day?

So that was your parents’ motivational technique then to get and did it work?

Yeah, I guess it did.

I mean we would clean it all up, but it you know, there was only you know it’ll only be a bite or two of everything.

But yeah, I would I would say yes, we would try to finish it up.

Yeah.

I r I remember when I was growing up, my mom would always say, You want to be a member of the Clean Plate Club?

And I didn’t.

Oh, have you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It just sounded like a club I wanted to be a part of.

Oh not me.

It sounded like a bunch of snobby people I didn’t have anything to do with.

I’m like, ugh, hall monitors.

No thanks.

Yeah, well that’s why I would have joined it.

But in any case, yeah, there are lots of different versions of this in English like clean your plate and it’ll be a nice day tomorrow or clean your plate or we won’t have a clear day tomorrow or if you don’t eat all your dinner the sun won’t shine tomorrow.

And apparently this goes back to a German phrase that that means the same thing basically.

Eat your plate clean and then tomorrow you’ll have good weather.

But there’s kind of a kind of a mistranslation there, isn’t there, Grant?

Yeah, so in English it dates to about the eighteen eighties, but it’s centuries older in German, and there’s a dialect difference that caused some confusion here.

In one dialect when you say the versions of this proverb, you’re saying if you clear all the food, you’ll get more good food tomorrow.

And it’s nothing about the weather.

But that word for more good food or some variation on that sounds exactly like the word for weather.

So in other dialects of of German, it was misunderstood.

And the expression that became more established was the version about the weather.

It’s very interesting.

So it wasn’t originally about weather at all.

It moved from the like practical advice about eating all your food so you get more good food tomorrow to something a little more superstitious that eating all your food means magically there’ll be good weather tomorrow.

And even in the United States, the original saying lurks behind the scenes partly because we have this Germanic history here and there’s a version of this in Pennsylvania Dutch by the way, Pennsylvania German.

But that version behind the scene is that there are variations in English about cleaning all the serving dishes or platters or everything off the table, not the individual plate.

So it’s literally about eating everything on the table in the original German use, not that a kid should behave.

It’s like you’re telling adults this as well.

You’re telling everyone present to eat everything on the table.

Right, and that’s how it was used in my family.

It was for everybody.

Yeah, yeah.

And but again, it’s not about weather, it was about that’s the only way that you’re in su thatre this chef or the cook will go to all this trouble tomorrow to provide food for you again.

‘Cause if you’re insulting them by not eating all the food today then why would they bother tomorrow?

This weather connection is interesting though because there are other little bits of folklore like from Kentucky where if you lick your plate at breakfast there will be rain before supper.

Oh so people have conflated the two or if all the dishes are emptied at a meal it’s gonna rain.

That’s that’s an idea there.

But but what interests me too is that that it’s you know it’s spoken in terms that a kid can understand, you know.

There’s a there’s a cause and effect there.

Oh my goodness.

So okay.

So it’s I never really took it as a motivation.

It was more it’s just gonna make it a a nice day tomorrow for whatever reason.

And s you know, I guess part of me or you know, maybe when I was younger, I didn’t really think about the weather, but as I got older I thought, well, okay, if it’s it maybe it is about the weather, but how does it affect the weather?

I think your explanations have been fabulous.

Oh outstanding.

Thank you for bringing this to us.

It’s always fun.

We always like digging into folklore, even though it but it’s it’s certainly fun for us and we appreciate your time today.

Yeah.

All right.

You have a nice or clear day tomorrow or today.

Well that means we get to eat everything right on our plate.

Excellent..

That’s right Down to the parsley.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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