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A Brief History of Thanksgiving in the United States and Canada


Thanksgiving in Canada and the United States have always been very different. In the United States Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November and people travel across the country to visit with family. There are over-the-top parades, motifs of Pilgrims in traditional dress, the quintessential football and lastly, Black Friday shopping. In Canada however, thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October and is seen as a more flexible, relaxed holiday, in which families may gather, a fall feast is consumed and some of the last good autumn weather is enjoyed before winter.


The mythic story behind American thanksgiving is widely known to most Americans who partake in the day of celebration. In 1621, in a small coastal town in Massachusetts, the Plymouth colonists and the Native American Wampanoag shared a harvest feast, celebrating the end of a devastating first year in the colonies and the Pilgrims’ first successful corn harvest. The Governor, William Bradford, organized a festive feast, inviting the Wampanoag chief Massasoit and his tribe to partake with the settlers. The festivities lasted three days and wishes of goodwill were exchanged. This version of history glosses over the bloody violence and genocide that the colonists inflicted on the Indigenous peoples of North America, leaving them with a trauma that would stay with them for generations. Additionally, the Wampanoag leader reached out to the Plymouth colonists seeking an alliance but it wasn't because this transgression on their lands was widely accepted to the tribe, it was because his people had been decimated by disease and he thought the English could be helpful in fending off rival tribes. The second Thanksgiving celebration was hosted by the Pilgrims in 1623, with the tradition slowly becoming more frequent as the years went on.


After the American Revolutionary War concluded in 1783, the First and Second Continental Congresses designated at least one day per year to thanksgiving. In 1789, America’s first president George Washington issued the very first Thanksgiving proclamation, calling for Americans to express their gratitude for a triumphant end to the war of independence. Many of Washington’s successors, including John Adams and James Madison, proceeded to follow the new tradition and designated their own days of thanksgiving during their administrations. Finally, at the height of the American Civil War in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation imploring all Americans to ask God for mercy for those affected by the war and to end the violence. Lincoln selected the final Thursday of every November to be the designated day of Thanksgiving. Interestingly, the day briefly changed to occur a week earlier in 1939 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt who wanted to spur retail sales during the Great Depression. The intrinsically capitalist, crazy spending of the current Black Friday events can arguably be seen to have roots in this effort by Roosevelt. However, in 1941 the president was forced, due to immense opposition, to sign a bill officially marking the fourth Thursday of November to be Thanksgiving.


In contrast, Canadian Thanksgiving developed due to a much different set of circumstances and events. In 1578, Sir Martin Frobisher was sailing from England in search of the Northwest Passage when he stumbled upon what is now Nunavut. He and his crew celebrated the expedition’s safe arrival in the New World by gathering, feasting and partaking in an Anglican church service. In the years following this first Thanksgiving celebration, white settlers attempted to emulate the Native American and Indigenous Canadian long-standing custom of celebrating the fall harvest. Samuel de Champlain mandated a series of feasts in 1616, inviting the Mi’kmaq people and aiming to keep up the settlers’ spirits.


Canada’s early Thanksgivings tended to be religious, prayerful affairs in which important events, like the end of the War of 1812, were celebrated. In 1859, four years before Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation, the day of Thanksgiving became a national affair in Canada. However, unlike the American’s strict observance of Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November, Canadians celebrated the day sporadically and on different days depending on the year. It was only in 1957 that the date was set to be the second Monday in October and in many provinces, like Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, Thanksgiving is still not a public holiday. Therefore, while Canada’s traditional Thanksgiving originates earlier than that of the Americans, it is safe to say that the holiday is much more fanatically celebrated down south, where the festivities have been more rigorously developed and enshrined in the American way of life.

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