Bean-feast

A bean-feast, also known as beano in Britain, is an informal term for a celebratory meal or party, especially an annual summer dinner given by an employer to their employees. Its probable origin is the Twelfth Night festival from the Low Countries. By extension, colloquially, it describes any festive occasion with a meal and perhaps an outing. An alternative derivation refers the name to the eating of a dish of beans and bacon, and seems to trace to 1725, when Daniel Day of Wapping, London began to entertain friends near his estate at Fairlop in Essex on the first Friday in July.

A goose, which is the ''raison d’être'' of the feast, has been dropped out of the name, though a goose was always the staple of the entertainment. A bean goose is a migratory bird, arriving in UK in autumn and going northwards in April. It takes its name from the likeness of the upper part of the bill to a horse-bean.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the beanfeast often took the form of a trip to some beauty spot, where the meal was provided. (e.g. "I want a feast, I want a bean feast. Cream buns and doughnuts and fruitcake with no nuts, so good you could go nuts. " — Veruca Salt, '' Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory'')

It is derived from the Twelfth Night feast, at which a king cake or pie with a special object or "favour" buried in it was a great feature. This remains a common custom in much of Europe and former European colonies; in the US mainly in New Orleans