The Tale of Thanksgiving
October 9, 2006

Thanksgiving is a national holiday that has been celebrated in many places around the world, but mostly in North America (USA and Canada). Here, it is a day set aside to thank God for the bountiful harvest that has blessed our nation of Canada.

Thanksgiving comes from 3 distinct traditions, the first of which was from Europe where peasants celebrated the plentiful harvests that were received in the past. The second tradition was a formal religious observance in thanking God for all He had done for us. The third was perhaps the most well known. It started with pilgrims who came to North America and wanted to celebrate their first harvest in Massachusetts. Governor Bradford proclaimed a day of feasting in Massachusetts in the autumn of 1621, and the settlers invited the friendly local Indians to join them. They celebrated for three days, with turkey, squash and pumpkin which had become a Thanksgiving tradition ever since.

In Canada, Thanksgiving was brought to Nova Scotia in the 1750’s where it was adopted to commemorate the end of the Seven Years War. In 1879, Parliament declared Nov 6 a day of Thanksgiving, but it had a national rather than a religious implication. The date changed once again after World War II in Jan 31, 1957, when Parliament proclaimed the second Monday of October as Thanksgiving Day.

In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated on a different day. President Lincoln (1863) proclaimed that the last Thursday in November of any year would be Thanksgiving Day. However the date changed in 1941, when President Roosevelt and Congress passed the resolution that the fourth Thursday in November of every year was to be Thanksgiving Day.

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