 |
| Not my handprint turkey art. Photo by bnilsen. CC. |
It's Thanksgiving in Canada!
Like much of Canadian history, the background of our Thanksgiving has a sort of lacklustre and muddled backstory that is often confused with American history. (In school, I'm pretty sure we did a lot of pilgrim-related crafting for Thanksgiving, even though that has nothing to do with the Canadian holiday.)
So, in case you were wondering (and I KNOW YOU WERE), here is the backstory to Canadian Thanksgiving:
For a very long time, there were a bunch of random feasts of thanksgiving to mark a whole bunch of different occasions: colonizers who almost died on their journeys and then didn't, the end of some wars, and a member of the monarchy getting over an illness. Yes, there were even a few shared feasts with some First Nations clans in there to celebrate the harvest.
Finally, it got to the point where thanksgiving-related festivals were happening pretty regularly, so they decided to make it a thing in 1879.
Of course, they still couldn't agree on a date. It shifted around a bunch until finally someone said, "Enough is enough! Let's stop being random. How about the second Monday in October, because that's around when harvest celebrations have been going on for lots and lots of generations?"
And everybody said, yes. Let's do that. So we did.
Now you know why. You're welcome.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a weekly digest and BONUS CONTENT!
No comments:
Post a Comment