How Canadians Celebrate Thanksgiving


by Dominique Halet - Date: 2008-11-10 - Word Count: 341 Share This!

Since many centuries, peoples around the world are accustomed to pay homage to Mother nature for good harvests through huge feast. That kind of family gatherings only for enjoyment and fellowship is easier in Canada than anywhere else in the world. Indeed, the official Thanksgiving Day in Canada is on a Monday but Canadians commonly use the entire weekend to celebrate this holiday.

The Canadian tradition requires to sit back and relax and watch the featured "Thanksgiving Day Classic" football match on TV after the main meal. If the Canadian Football League offers a double schedule of competitions for Thanksgiving day, it is for not being confused with the American version of football. Teams playing only two days in the year on a Monday, a rotation schedule has been developed in order to decide which team will play in each Thanksgiving Day match.

Besides activities inside the house like the family gathering and watch the football match, the Thanksgiving weekend is generally used as the last major outdoor extravaganza.

Either watching or participating to the many Thanksgiving Day parades that are such an entire part of the holiday will get one out of the home and into the end of the summer air.

The Thanksgiving weekend is also for Canadians the last outside escapade before the arrival of the long and cold winter. It is also a perfect time to make a last hike, organize a fishing contest or just admire the beautiful red, gold and brown autumn colors.

Although the Thanksgiving Day festivity is a lay feast, those with a spiritual mind have their own Thanksgiving traditions that they partake of in their churches. Churches are decorated with pumpkins, cornucopias, wheat sheaves, corn ears and gourds inspired by the customs of old European harvest festivals. There are special scriptural texts and hymns especially consacreated to this celebration of harvest and to show gratitude to God for his goodness.

Thanksgiving is the opportunity for us to remember that during the previous centuries as well as nowadays in many countries, there are people that are less fortunate.


Related Tags: thanksgiving, canada, traditions, celebration, customs, grateful, pumpkin, canadians, harvest season


D. Halet is an European history, Holidays and Tarot Cards passionate; she writes articles and creates websites dedicated to these subjects.
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