There seems to always be that brief pause at the dinner table. My family isn’t religious; we don’t normally say grace before our meals, save for a few large family gatherings. So when I’m eating with a friend’s family for the first time, I always pause briefly to see if they will clasp their hands together before digging into their food. And often, I notice their family members wait a few seconds to glance in my direction and see what my customs are. I find it funny, too, that sometimes my family will say grace around new guests—whether it is to indicate the shared meal as a special occasion or display knowledge of traditional religious customs, I’m not sure. It’s almost an embedded part of American table manners—even if you don’t say grace yourself, you give everyone that moment of pause to start the mealtime prayer, and if no one seizes it, the host can announce to their guests that it’s time to dig in.
My dad visited me in Copenhagen a few weeks ago, and my host family graciously invited the two of us over for dinner. As we settled in with our filled plates, I noticed my father patiently peer over at my host family in the classic pre-dinner pause. My host mother, meanwhile, promptly started to shovel salad into her mouth after sitting down, without so much as a glance up at what my father’s pre-mealtime ritual might be.
Religion can manifest itself in so many different ways across countries. The United States, of course, has no official state religion. Denmark does have a religiously affiliated government with the Folkekirken, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark, as its state religion. And yet, the Danes are known for being a distinctly secular people.
I have always felt that I lived a fairly secular life in the United States, but I’ve slowly found that some of my American habits may be more religiously-charged than I previously realized. Many Americans don’t officially belong to a church as members, but religion is still very apparent in their everyday lives. We are one nation “under God,” of course. Mainstream American movies often contain Christian themes; uproars occur if Starbucks’ holiday cup decorations dare to threaten Christianity; teens say they are #blessed when they are happy; and people make sure to partake in prayer before special meals, or at least demonstrate they know how to do so.
Meanwhile, about 80 percent of the population in Denmark consists of official state church members. But only about 3 percent of the Danish population attends church regularly, compared to 37 percent of Americans. In fact, most Danes do not hide the fact that they are only church members because non-members are charged steep prices for weddings and funerals. The Danes are respectful of religion, but even the official website of Denmark states “religion and Christianity play only a minor, often indirect, role in public life.” They hardly even talk about it—some sociologists report extreme difficulty in receiving any sort of elaborate feedback from Scandinavian people when they probe respondents with questions about religion. And Danes certainly don’t know enough people who say grace before a meal, making it unlikely for the “brief pause before digging into dinner” norm to ever catch on.
Opens in a new window