Canada Trip.co.uk

Well, its the second monday in October, so that means its Thanksgiving in Canada!
Thanksgiving in Canada occurring on the second Monday in October, is an annual Canadian holiday to give thanks at the close of the harvest season. Although the original act of Parliament references God and the holiday is celebrated in churches, the holiday is also celebrated in a secular manner. It’s best considered therefore to be similar to the UK’s own harvest festivals, though this unfortunately for us is NOT a bank holiday!

Thanksgiving is a statutory holiday in most jurisdictions of Canada, with the provinces of Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia being the exceptions. Where a company is regulated by the federal government (such as those in the telecommunications and banking sectors), it is recognized regardless of status provincially.

Thanksgiving 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 selections drawn from biblical stories relating to the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.

While the actual Thanksgiving holiday is on a Monday, Canadians might eat their Thanksgiving meal on any day of the three-day weekend, though Sunday and Monday are the most common. While Thanksgiving is usually celebrated with a large family meal, it is also often a time for weekend getaways.

Canada’s top professional football league, the Canadian Football League, holds a nationally televised doubleheader known as the “Thanksgiving Day Classic.” It is one of two weeks in which the league plays on Monday afternoons, the other being the Labour Day Classic. Unlike the Labour Day games, the teams that play on the Thanksgiving Day Classic rotate each year.

Unlike the American counterpart, Thanksgiving parades are not common in Canada; in fact, there is only one that coincides with the holiday. That parade, known as the Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest Parade, gets significant national attention as a result and is broadcast nationwide on CTV and A.

Still, these days, the significance for Thanksgiving for Canadians is being together with family and friends, and enjoying Thanksgiving dinner together!

So, to all of our Canadian readers, Happy Thanksgiving!!

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 10th, 2011 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Canada Trip.co.uk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.