Canadian Thanksgiving

[vaznetti]

So, Canadian Thanksgiving. Last year I was just trying to keep my head above water in the new job, and didn't have energy to pay attention to things like this, but this year the penny has finally dropped: Canadian Thanksgiving is not just an earlier version of American Thanksgiving, and not just because it's on a Monday.

So now I have some questions for the Canadians on my flist (and anyone else who knows the answers to these questions). Do you celebrate on Sunday or on Monday? Do you eat before or after 5 pm? Do you consider Thanksgiving a religious (or a Christian) holiday?

And in typical anal lj fashion, I decided to spam my flist with a poll. Except to be polite, I'll put it

[Poll #587298]



Please feel free to pimp this poll to other people, and please explain further in comments.

Comments

[greenelephant.livejournal.com]

I learned from living in the US for six years what a big deal T-giving is there. For me growing up there was never much of a celebration, but that has much more to do with a dysfunctional family dynamic than anything particular to Thanksgiving.

I *love* roast turkey dinner and have on many occasions made the full deal just for myself, so for us the idea of Thanksgiving is connected to my getting to make the traditional meal, and to having the time off to do so.

But as the comment above mentions too, Canadian Thanksgiving does not have the same ritual significance as it does in the US. To my knowledge, we do not have the pilgrim story, nor parades or special shopping sales on the day following. People do not seem to fly across the country to be home with family (in large part, this must be due to the relative brevity of the holidgy). For Americans, it seems that T-giving inaugurates the Holiday Season, but for us, it's too early and is more connected with the fact that the harvest takes place earlier on account of the colder weather.

Still, my favorite holiday ever (plus, isn't it better to have a break half way through the semester rather than a week before the end of classes?) :-)

[vaznetti]

plus, isn't it better to have a break half way through the semester rather than a week before the end of classes?

Ah, but when I was in college we kept going quite late, so there was nearly a month left, and it was the great paper-writing week off.

I think part of this poll was my attempt to figure out that Canadian Thanksgiving doesn't have the same ritual associations -- I kept trying to figure out why there was so much variation in the way people observed it!