A stag party, stag night, stag do (in Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, and New Zealand), or a buck’s night (in Australia), also known as a bachelor party (in the United States and Canada) is a party held for a man, shortly before he enters marriage, to celebrate his «last night of freedom» or merely to spend time with his male or female friends, who are often but may not be at his wedding party afterwards.
By the sexual revolution of the 1960s, women had launched their own version of the prewedding festivities : the hens party. The terms hen party, hen do or hen night are common in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and the term bachelorette party is common in the United States and Canada.
Hen party punting, Cambridge, July 2010 – Par Ardfern [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
The stag party, however, goes back much further than you’d expect. It’s rooted in ancient history – as early as the 5th century B.C. It is believed that the ancient Spartans were the first to make a celebration out of the groom’s last night as a single man. Spartan soldiers held a dinner in their friend’s honor and made toasts on his behalf — with, one assumes, a Spartan sense of decorum. Since then, the events have generally grown more raucous. In 1896, a stag party thrown by Herbert Barnum Seeley – a grandson of P.T. Barnum – for his brother was raided by police after rumors circulated that a famous belly dancer would be performing nude.
In the past, a stag party could commonly involve a black-tie dinner hosted by the groom’s father, with toasts to the groom and the bride. The term bachelor – previously meaning a young knight or a student with a bachelor’s degree – first appeared in reference to an unmarried man in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the 14th century. The term bachelor party didn’t appear until 1922. It was first used in the Scottish publication Chambers’s Journal of Literature, Science and Arts to describe a «jolly old» party.
Wrong translation
> To have a stag party > Faire une fête de cerf
> To have a hen party > Faire une fête de poule
Correct French idiom
> Enterrer sa vie de garçon / de jeune fille
