While I don’t live in Canada anymore, and haven’t for a while, I still love celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving. Some of you might be thinking “Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving too?” and others may be thinking “Isn’t Thanksgiving in November?” To answer those, yes, Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving, and we celebrate it in October; it always falls on the second Monday of the month. Many people host their dinner on Sunday though (my family always did), because Monday is the public holiday, and that gives a good day to relax before going back to work. I do it on Sunday because it’s not a public holiday in Germany, and Monday is a working day. Many of the traditions are shared with American Thanksgiving. We eat turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. It’s a little different though in that most Canadians won’t cross the country to celebrate Thanksgiving with family; if you’re near your family, you usually celebrate with them, but if you’re not, you celebrate with friends where you are. I also notice that some families’ Thanksgiving dinners tend to be a bit more “ethnic” than the traditional meal; in typical Canadian form, you always put a bit of your homeland into the tradition. For example, on my mom’s side they often served spätzle with dinner. I will be serving guacamole as an appetizer; I’m not remotely Mexican, but meh….I’m in Germany anyway! We usually serve dinner in the evening as opposed to the afternoon, and there’s no football. The history of the holiday is also a little different. Canadian Thanksgiving is more of a harvest celebration (traditionally, anyway), and the American one has something to do with pilgrims giving thanks for having food over the winter in a new land (I admit that this isn’t really covered in our history classes, so I’m just going by TV here).

Anyway, I’m looking forward to eating turkey tomorrow! Here is a picture from Thanksgiving 2009:

Happy Thanksgiving, Canadians!