Happy Camper...?

Question:

Happy Camper...?

Why do they call it that? Are campers happy or something?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

As for "happy camper" (meaning a person who is pleased or contented), I too have found it annoying since it first appeared in the early 1980s. The underlying reference, of course, is to a child at summer camp, a venue in which happiness and "team spirit" are stressed yet, especially for neophytes, notoriously elusive. So it's probably significant that "happy camper" is most frequently used in the sarcastic negative form "not a happy camper." Probably the most vivid account of childhood camp-angst remains Allan Sherman's 1963 hit song "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh," which begins "Hello Muddah, hello Fadduh, here I am at Camp Granada" and includes such lines as "All the counselors hate the waiters and the lake has alligators. ... You remember Jeffrey Hardy? They're about to organize a searching party." No wonder I refused to go to summer camp.