Canadian Thanksgiving

I forgot all about Canadian Thanksgiving until the other day, and just now, when I read Andrew Richie's blog (aka. Canada's #1 Martha fan). I've always liked Canadians, with their accents and Quebec City (on my list of must go and see)... plus, all of my Canadian friends have been really cool as well. So, I did a little research to learn a little more about the how's and why's and what's of Canadian Thanksgiving. Here's what I found on Wikepedia:





Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day (Canadian French: Jour de l'Action de grâce), occurring on the second Monday in October (since 1959), is an annual Canadian holiday to give thanks at the close of the harvest season. Although the original act of Parliament references God and the holiday is celebrated in churches, the holiday is also celebrated in a secular manner.
On January 31, 1957, the Canadian Parliament proclaimed:


“A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed … to be observed on the 2nd Monday in October.”


Canadian Thanksgiving coincides with Columbus Day in the United States and the Dia de la Raza in most of Latin America. As a liturgical festival, Thanksgiving corresponds to the English and continental-European Harvest festival, with churches decorated with cornucopias, pumpkins, corn, wheat sheaves, and other harvest bounty, English and European harvest hymns sung on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, and scriptural selections drawn from biblical stories relating to the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.[citation needed]


While the actual Thanksgiving holiday is on a Monday, Canadians might eat their Thanksgiving meal on any day of the three-day weekend, though Sunday and Monday are the most common. While Thanksgiving is usually celebrated with a large family meal, it is also often a time for weekend getaways. The Thanksgiving weekend, given that it invariably falls at the very end of the summer, is traditionally a perfect time to put away the patio furniture, close the cottage and pull the boat up, thus getting ready for the long cold winter.

It's a lot like American Thanksgiving, only in October. I think it's kind of better because they get can get their Christmas decorations up lickety split after Halloween, and leave them up for a long time too!

So the next time you're talking to our "brothers from Canadian mothers" on the second Monday of October, you can confidently wish them a Happy Thanksgiving, or "Heureux d'action de grâces" and maybe even answer a little trivia. Fancy! I would just say Happy Thanksgiving though because whenever I try to speak a foreign language to a person from whatever foreign country, they 1. act like I'm hurting their ears and 2. get all uppity and condescending about it. Even my Korean language Rosetta Stone program! "SANDOOWICHEE", OK?????!!!