If there’s one consolation during the often-melancholy, waning days of summer, it’s the prospect of Labor Day. More specifically, it’s the prospect of being outdoors with friends and family, swapping stories, recalling adventures (and misadventures) from the previous few months and making plans for what’s ahead — all while enjoying a cold beverage as a huge variety of food cooks on a nearby grill, filling the air with the mouthwatering aroma of a good old-fashioned barbecue.

Here, as the summer of 2012 nears its unofficial close, LIFE.com offers up a selection of photographs celebrating one of America’s time-honored end-of-season traditions — namely, the picnic and barbecue, or barbeque, or BBQ. However you spell it, it still translates as “delicious.”