Thanksgiving (Canada)

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For the American holiday, see Thanksgiving (United States).

Thanksgiving (Canada)

The First Thanksgiving, painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863–1930)
Also called	Turkey Day
Observed by	Canada
Type	Cultural
Significance	A celebration of being thankful for what one has and the bounty of the previous year.
Date	Second Monday in October.
2006 date	October 9
Celebrations	Parades, Spending Time with Family, Eating Large Dinners

Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is an annual one-day holiday to give thanks, traditionally to God, for the things one has at the close of the harvest season. In Canada, Thanskgiving is celebrated on the second Monday in October.

1 Traditional celebration
2 History of Thanksgiving in Canada
3 References
4 External links
- 4.1 Thanksgiving food links

[edit] Traditional celebration

In Canada, Thanksgiving is a three-day weekend (although some provinces choose to observe a four day weekend, Friday–Monday). While the actual Thanksgiving holiday is on a Monday, Canadians might eat their Thanksgiving meal on any day of that three day weekend. This often means celebrating a meal with one group of relatives on one day, and another meal with a different group of relatives on another day. Although in English Canada Thanksgiving is often celebrated with family, it is also often a time for weekend getaways for couples to observe the autumn leaves, spend one last weekend at the cottage or participate in various outdoor activities such as hiking, fishing and hunting. The holiday is not as significant a family occasion amongst French Canadians, however.

[edit] History of Thanksgiving in Canada

The history of Thanksgiving in Canada goes back to an English explorer, Martin Frobisher, who had been trying to find a northern passage to the Orient. He did not succeed but he did establish a settlement in Canada. In the year 1578, he held a formal ceremony, in what is now the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, to give thanks for surviving the long journey. This is considered the first Canadian Thanksgiving, and the first Thanksgiving to have taken place in North America. Other settlers arrived and continued these ceremonies. Frobisher was later knighted and had an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean in northern Canada named after him — Frobisher Bay.

At the same time, French settlers, having crossed the ocean and arrived in Canada with explorer Samuel de Champlain, also held huge feasts of thanks. They even formed 'The Order of Good Cheer' and gladly shared their food with their Native-Canadian neighbours.

After the Seven Years' War ended in 1763 handing over New France to the British, the citizens of Halifax held a special day of Thanksgiving.

After the American Revolution, American refugees who remained loyal (United Empire Loyalists) to Great Britain were exiled from the United States and came to Canada. They brought the customs and practices of the American Thanksgiving to Canada, although as a liturgical festival Thanksgiving in Canada also 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 lections drawn from the biblical stories relating to the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.

Eventually in 1879, the Canadian Parliament declared November 6 a day of Thanksgiving and a national holiday in Canada. Over the years many dates were used for Thanksgiving, the most popular being the third Monday in October. After World War I, both Armistice Day and Thanksgiving were celebrated on the Monday of the week in which November 11 occurred. Ten years later, in 1931, the two days became separate holidays, and Armistice Day was renamed Remembrance Day.

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.[1]

The first Thanksgiving Day in Canada after Confederation was observed as a civic holiday on April 5, 1872 to celebrate the recovery of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) from a serious illness. Before then, thanksgiving days were observed beginning in 1799 but did not occur every year. Starting in 1879 Thanksgiving Day was observed every year but the date was proclaimed annually and changed year to year. The theme of the Thanksgiving holiday also changed year to year to reflect an important event to be thankful for. In the early years it was for an abundant harvest and occasionally for a special anniversary. After the First World War it was for Armistice Day, while more recently and including today it has been a day of general thanksgiving.